The Alternative in Greece
Let us begin with what should be indisputable: the Eurogroup agreement that the Greek government was dragged into on Friday amounts to a headlong retreat.
Read more...Category Archives: Privatization
Negotiation Breakdown Exposes Widening Rift Between Germany and Greece
The negotiations between Greece and the Eurogroup are on a worse trajectory than conventional wisdom would have you believe.
Read more...Fog of Negotiations: Greece and Germany Make Friendlier Noises, Restart Talks, But Press Reports Diverge
After a collapse of negotiations over whether and how to resolve Syriza’s demands for a new deal with the Eurozone with the insistence of its counterparties that the new government adhere to the terms of its existing deal, technical discussions are set to resume Friday. The drop-dead date is Monday, since any extension or modification of the current so-called bailout needs to happen by February 28, when it expires. The lead time is necessary because the Germany Bundestag and the Finnish Parliament must approve any new or extended deal. But what is the real state of play?
Read more...John Helmer: Convicted Fraudster Jonathan Hay, Harvard’s Man Who Wrecked Russia, Resurfaces in Ukraine
One of the sorriest chapters in recent American history was how we allowed an unprecedented opportunity to assist Russia in managing the end of its Communist era to turn into a looting exercise by well-placed insiders, including advisors under contract to Harvard.
onathan Hay ran the day-to-day operations of the Russia Project. He was found guilty of violating three counts of the False Claims Act and was debarred from serving in USAID. But he’s managed to resurface in Ukraine, working in the local operations of a Polish think tank. Nicely played.
Read more...Tom Engelhardt: More and War – The Tao of Washington
Yves here. This is a terrific piece on the thinking, such as it is, that has come to dominate the Beltway, and how these preoccupations keep the US lurching forward in a costly, destructive policy trajectory.
Read more...Michael Hudson: The War on Pensions – The US Budget Anti-Pension Law
On the Senate’s last day in session in December, it approved the government’s $1.1 trillion budget for coming fiscal year.
Few people realize how radical the new U.S. budget law was. Budget laws are supposed to decide simply what to fund and what to cut. A budget is not supposed to make new law, or to rewrite the law. But that is what happened, and it was radical.
Read more...Wisconsin as a Frontier of School Privatization: Will Anyone Notice the Looting?
I never dreamed that a class I took in college, The Politics of Popular Education, which covered the nineteenth century in France and England, would prove to be germane in America. I didn’t have any particular interest in the topic; the reason for selecting the course was that the more serious students picked their classes based on the caliber of the instructor, and this professor, Kate Auspitz, got particularly high marks. The course framed both the policy fights and the broader debate over public education in terms of class, regional, and ideological interests.
The participants in these struggles were acutely aware that the struggle over schooling was to influence the future of society: what sort of citizens would these institutions help create?
As the post below on the march of school privatization in Wisconsin demonstrates, those concerns are remarkably absent from current debates. The training of children is simply another looting opportunity, like privatizing parking meters and roads.
Read more...Two Detroits, Separate and Unequal: A Journey Across a City Divided
Rather than growing closer in the coming post-bankruptcy era, many residents fear that these two Detroits — already so separate and unequal — will have increasingly divergent futures.
Read more...Midterms 2014: The Red Wedding for Democrats
Democrats lost the midterms because they stood up for their principles: Neo-liberalism.
Read more...From Public Citizen: Top 10 Most Pernicious Investor-State Dispute Settlement Lawsuits
The Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) under TTP and TTIP erodes state sovereignty and the ability of states to protect citizens.
Read more...G20 Finance Ministers Reveal Impotence in the Face of Rising Stresses
Yves here. It’s hardly uncommon for big international pow-wows like the G20 to produce grand-sounding statements that when read carefully call for unthreatening, which usually means inconsequential, next steps. But this G20 just past was revealing, in a bad way, about the state of international political economy.
Read more...New Jersey Funneling Pension Fund Cash to Wall Street Investment Managers
David Sirota has carved out a much-needed niche lately by poking around in the unseemly deals between public pension funds and Wall Street predators, and he brings yet another scoop, this time in New Jersey:
Read more...Don Quijones: Spain’s Silent Reconquest of Mexico
With the ink still drying on Mexico’s historic energy reform, global oil and gas majors are salivating at the prospect of gaining access to one of the world’s largest and until recently most nationalized energy markets. One of those companies is the Spanish electricity giant Iberdrola, which expects to massively expand its operations in Mexico through increased investments of close to €1 billion.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: €1 billion is chicken feed in this age of inflated corporate balance sheets. Indeed, for some corporations such a sum is probably hardly worth getting out of bed for these days. However, in Mexico it can go a very long way, much further than it can in Europe or the US – especially when you have paid moles lobbying for your every interest at the highest level of government.
Read more...Algorithmic Regulation, “Code is Law,” and the Case of Ferguson
“Algorithmic regulation” is subject to bad and gamed data, accepts closed source code, and isn’t suitable for “automated intervention,” let alone the government of a free people. I also believe it presents problems as tractable that are in fact wicked, leading to project failure. But it’s great for “Investor Storytime!”
Read more...Privatizing America’s Public Universities as “Shock Doctrine” (or Not)
Defund, claim crisis, call for privatization… Profit! [ka-ching!]
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