austerity

John Rees on the reasons for the Tory debacle and what comes next

Temer has vowed since replacing Dilma Rousseff as president that he will make sure austerity and reform packages are passed through the Senate in a bid to revive the economy and boost business confidence [Xinhua]
A combination of falling interest and inflation rates and a boost in consumer and business confidence is signalling that the Brazilian economy, one of the worst faring in BRICS for the past four years, is finally turning a corner.

An operation that began as a seemingly obscure academic discussion three years ago is now becoming a full-blown propaganda campaign by some of the most powerful institutions in the industrialized world. This is what rightly should be termed the War on Cash. Like the War on Terror, the War on Cancer or the War on Drugs, its true agenda is sinister and opaque. If we are foolish enough to swallow the propaganda for complete elimination of cash in favor of pure digital bank money, we can pretty much kiss our remaining autonomy and privacy goodbye.

ATHENS, GREECE — (Analysis) Exactly two years ago, on August 14, 2015, the “leftist” SYRIZA-led Greek coalition government — just over a month removed from a referendum that saw 62 percent of voters rejecting a new austerity plan proposed by the “troika” of Greece’s lenders, the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund — put the final nail in the coffin of the referendum result, passing the third, and most onerous to date, memorandum proposal

In the eyes of profiteers, there’s money to be made from debt, especially from the poor. Privatisation of the court bailiff system is like privatising parking enforcement – and look where that led – scandal after scandal. The civilianisation of law enforcement has always proved to be much worse than when managed by government with civilian scrutiny. This, like so many other privatisation projects this will end in failure with the over-stretched citizenry shouldering the burden of government incompetence and the poor exploited even further.

A man waves a Greek flag in front of the Greek Parliament during a rally against new austerity measures in Athens, May 18, 2017. (AP/Yorgos Karahalis)

Indeed, the young are tethered to a slumber land of no ideas or ideals. Shackled to the beasts of debt and endless consumer-rent-mortgage-fee-levy-tax-fine-surcharge-hidden add on Capitalism. They amble to the nearest Starbucks and find the plastic putrid world and shitty coffee essence safe, conformist, the place to snuggle in with Twitter-Snapchat-Instagram-Facebook-Spotify.

As an intended outcome of neoliberal doctrine and a natural stage of capitalist development, global financialization constructs a borderless nexus of power in which debt and austerity fuels a cultural, political and economic landscape bound to enduring structures of domination, and creates unprecedented wealth through the accumulation of suffering.
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...and now, as we predicted some months ago, it's Italeave:
Italy Openly Discussing Euro Exit
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The post NEWS AND VIEWS FROM THE NEFARIUM JULY 6 2017 appeared first on Giza Death Star.

It’s impossible to draw any general political conclusions from the recent fire at Grenfell Tower in London. Sadly, buildings run by private landlords, privately owned houses, and public housing will all occasionally meet with the tragedy of fire. This has nothing to do with austerity. This case is a simple matter of bad choices by an arm of government.