The Meme Wars

[georgephillip]

"Carnivalesque Rebellion: A sudden unexpected moment of truth, a mass reversal of perspective, a global mindshift - from which the corporate/consumerist forces never fully recover."

"A few days ago protests against the status quo erupted across Europe. The Prime Minister of Iceland was pelted with eggs; a man outraged by bank bailouts drove a cement truck into the gates of the Irish Parliament; and over 100,000 workers from two dozen countries took to the streets in Brussels.

"However, the most spectacular actions of all occurred in Spain where 20% of the population, and an astronomical 42% of those under the age of 25, are unemployed.

"For twenty-four hours, Barcelona was shut down by a general strike: public transit ground to a halt, cafes were shuttered and garbage collection ceased.

"Later, as passions rose, a Levi’s clothing store was looted and its merchandise distributed to the crowd, a police car was torched and riot cops tussled with everyday folk.

"And in a sign that this time the insurrectionary passion will not subside, Portugal’s largest union is calling for a general strike on November 24th which is, coincidentally, in the midst of the global Carnivalesque Rebellion.

'“We think that there are now conditions for wide protests, a wave of strife that we have not seen in decades,' one observer explained."

For those who like to think big, try wrapping your mind around this metameme:

"Is Economic progress killing the planet?

Adbusters

 

[Avorysuds]

Intersting but I need links before I comment.

 

[Oddball]

Bureaucrat unions and massive socialistic welfare state handout programs have nothing to do with economic progress.

The serfs in Europe are striking and rioting because the socialists running their gubmints have promised more free crap than they can expropriate, from the productive and economically *ahem* progressing sectors of their economies.

 

[georgephillip]

Intersting but I need links before I comment.

Adbusters Blog is as far as I've tracked it so far.

 

[georgephillip]

Bureaucrat unions and massive socialistic welfare state handout programs have nothing to do with economic progress.

The serfs in Europe are striking and rioting because the socialists running their gubmints have promised more free crap than they can expropriate, from the productive and economically *ahem* progressing sectors of their economies.

As always you forget to mention Wall Street's role.

Why is that?

Still hoping for table scraps?

 

[Oddball]

Because the big players on Wall Street only do what they're allowed and/or directed to do.

You don't think that Goldman Sachs and AIG getting bailed out, while Lehman didn't, was by happenstance, do you?

 

[georgephillip]

"With Greece, however, the narrative goes this way: This country piled up an unsustainable debt load to build a welfare state it could not afford, and is now the spendthrift that must tighten its belt.

"Brussels, Berlin, and the banks are the dour Puritans now exacting penance from the Mediterranean hedonists for living beyond their means and committing the sin of pride by hosting the costly 2004 Olympics.

"This penance comes in the form of a European Union-International Monetary Fund program that will increase the country’s value-added tax to 23 percent, raise the retirement age to 65 for both men and women, make deep cuts in pensions and public sector wages, and eliminate practices promoting job security.(While the richest 1% of Europeans become even richer!)

"The ostensible aim of the exercise is to radically slim down the welfare state and get the spoiled Greeks to live within their means."

"Although the welfare-state narrative contains some nuggets of truth, it is fundamentally flawed.

"The Greek crisis essentially stems from the same frenzied drive of finance capital to draw profits from the massive indiscriminate extension of credit that led to the implosion of Wall Street.

"The Greek crisis falls into the pattern traced by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff in their book This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly: Periods of frenzied speculative lending are inexorably followed by government or sovereign debt defaults, or near defaults.

"Like the Third World debt crisis of the early 1980s and the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, the so-called sovereign debt problem of countries like Greece, Europe, Spain, and Portugal is principally a supply-driven crisis, not a demand-driven one."

Greece and Wall Street

 

[georgephillip]

Because the big players on Wall Street only do what they're allowed and/or directed to do.

You don't think that Goldman Sachs and AIG getting bailed out, while Lehman didn't, was by happenstance, do you?

I've never heard an adequate explanation for why Lehman was disappeared. Just as I haven't yet heard who allowed/or directed Goldman Sachs to educate Greek bankers on how to use derivatives to make debt "disappear."

"The frenzied Greek credit scene featured not only European financial actors. Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs showed Greek financial authorities how financial instruments known as derivatives could be used to make large chunks of Greek debt 'disappear,' thus making the national accounts look good to bankers eager to lend more.

"Then the very same agency turned around and, engaging in derivatives trading known as 'credit default swaps,' bet on the possibility that Greece would default, raising the country’s cost of borrowing from the banks but making a tidy profit for itself.

"If ever there was a crisis created by global finance, Greece is suffering from it right now."

Greece and Wall Street