The cynisism of Political monopoly

The cynicism of political monopoly

Leaders who's leadership is not under thread.
Who have established a system that will only promote them and sooner or later they will be in power.
A system that only the ones playing by its rules can thrive and by the time they are in position to do change, they want nothing to change anymore, if they ever did, of a system out of which they flourished.
These people do not feel the pressure to create.
Need is creative force and these leaders have no need.
They lead as hobby, a fetish, a position of status that for some has been inherited.
For these leaders it is easy to say 'there is no other way'.
It is easy to say words like 'we must' and 'we have to' and ' necessary', even though the plural is really just a rhetoric tool.
Whatever might be lost by what they decided as ' necessity' is not really lost for them because it was never theirs. It never substantially concerned them and even if it ones did they are glad it doesn't anymore.
At best they feel sympathy.
The 'only way' they offer is merely the only way because they are the only ones in position to provide ways.
The rest, are just subjected to the cynicism of their political monopoly
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Mr Pangalos at the University of Oxford Video

Mr Pangalos at the University of Oxford

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Mr Pangalos is admitably an excellent rhetor and experienced politician who is usually very entertaining to listen to (unless affected by the policies he speaks about).
Mr Pangalos spoke in front of an interdisciplinary audience that included some very well known political scientists and world leading economists (that possibly came to listen the strategy of the Greeks to fight the crisis right out of a generals mouth) .
He told us that the Greek government has found the problem knows the solution and it's applying it. Within the next three years the Greek  economic crisis will be history (along with the working and social rights of the Greek people) . Therefore it is now safe for investors to bring their money (so that their investments can become a myth in Greece).
He told us that corrupted citizens initiate a clientele system with politicians that get corrupted (like catching the flu).
He told us that the previous government doubled the debt, made everything worse and cheated by changing the numbers from the statistical service (as opposed to whom?).
He told us that modern Greeks illusion them self's on 'a good day' by thinking they are the direct dissentients of Pericles ( obviously modern politicians aren't).
He told us that in democracies power is given through elections that gave his party the power in agreement with the polls (even if through relative majority). Consequently he says that protests and riots are a fascists action (like splitting the bill at an expensive restaurant even if you were standing outside) .
Nevertheless we were more curious to hear how would mr Papandreou's government would invent and adopt a sustainable system that consequently provides equal opportunities. That; he did not say as well the following, respectively.
Mr Pangalos didn't tell us that the polls he mentioned in Greece for the past few years show an increasing trend of dislike towards the current political system. People that were asked whom they consider more capable of governing, out of the political parties, chose by majority the option of 'nobody'. (Too bad nobody is not running for elections. He would have nailed it!). All the signs of a decomposing political system are visible to everybody but its managers. Scandals, people resentment towards the ongoing 'family-o-cracy', media manipulation and control over exposing political views and most important, immigrating young people. Unfortunately people can only choose to vote out of what  they are presented because that is all they know.
Mr Pangalos didn't tell us how the economic boom that is needed in Greece will occur within the next three years (when the money runs out ). The 'corrupted politicians' by the 'corrupted citizens ' do not appears very promising to provide with infrastructure as they were elected on the basis of clientele relations rather than the merits of their capabilities (or in other words, based on their capability of political clientelism. If they were capable of progress maybe they wouldn't need the clientele relation).
He didn't tell us how it will be possible for small businesses to survive or spring out of Universities bringing innovative products and services without having to spend all their energy in bureaucratic procedures that last months (so that they can actually spend some time on developing their products).
He didn't tell us how the money and time will be managed so that Greek economy can flourish with the 'luxury' of people working for a living and not living to work.
He didn't tell us that the totalitarianistic method of collective responsibility were everybody pays for the mistakes of few, indiscriminately, is unfair. That people in power, media and major contractors would be more responsible than low income families and pensioners. Maybe not all politicians and media and contractors are to blame but still it would be more justified than indiscriminate punishment.
Unfortunately crisis's of these magnitude in the past, did not end well for Greeks.
Domestic issues is a responsibility of the government but the general crisis indicates to EU fundamental flaws of the system that is not to mr Pangalos or mr Papandreou to solve. The structure seems to be build on sand and the waves will keep coming.
Change is now a matter of survival and if not demanded, society is doomed to the cynicism of political monopoly

View Video of the talk

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the video is on MPG4 codec if you have problems viewing download  VLC player
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

 

The games on the 'expense' of Greece

 

        The games on the 'expense' of Greece

EU Parliament

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7fnJCmbuPU&feature=player_embedded

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Dangerous Games

The E.U.'s Dangerous Game

By MARK WEISBROT

Published: May 12, 20Digg

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The agreement by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund to provide up to $960 billion of support to the Continent’s weaker economies, as well as to financial markets, has appeared to calm investors worldwide, for the moment.
But this does not resolve the underlying problem, even in the short run.
The problem is one of irrational economic policy. The Greek government has reached an agreement with the E.U. authorities (which include the European Commission and the European Central Bank), and the I.M.F. that will make the current economic problems even worse.
This is known to economists, including the ones at the E.U. and I.M.F. who negotiated the agreement. The projections show that if their program “works,” Greece’s debt will rise from 115 percent of gross domestic product today to 149 percent in 2013. This means that in less than three years, and most likely sooner, Greece will be facing the same crisis that it faces today.
Furthermore, the Greek Finance Ministry now projects a decline of 4 percent in G.D.P. this year, down from less than 1 percent last year. However that projection is likely to prove overly optimistic. In other words, the Greek people will go through a lot of suffering, their economy will shrink and their debt burden will grow, and then they will very likely face the same choice of debt rescheduling, restructuring, or default — and/or leaving the Euro.
There are lessons to be learned from this debacle. First, no government should sign an agreement that guarantees an open-ended recession, and leaves it to the world economy to eventually pull them out of it. This process of “internal devaluation” — whereby unemployment is deliberately driven to high levels in order to drive down wages and prices while keeping the nominal exchange rate fixed — is not only unjust, it is unviable. This is even more true for Greece, given its initial debt burden.
The tens of thousands of Greeks in the streets have it right, and the E.U. economists have it wrong. You cannot shrink your way out of recession; you have to grow your way out, as the United States is doing (albeit too slowly).
If the E.U. and the I.M.F. will not offer a growth option to Greece, the country would be better off leaving the Euro and renegotiating its debt.
Argentina tried the “internal devaluation” strategy from mid-1998 to the end of 2001, suffering through a depression that pushed half the country into poverty. It then dropped its peg to the dollar and defaulted on its debt. The economy shrank for just one more quarter and then had a robust recovery, growing 63 percent over the next six years.
(By contrast, the “internal devaluation” process promises not only indefinite recession, but a long, very slow recovery if it “works” — as we can see from the I.M.F.’s projections for Latvia and Estonia. Both of these countries are projected to take 8 or 9 years to reach their pre-recession levels of output.)
The E.U. authorities sent markets crashing last Thursday by saying that they had not discussed using “quantitative easing” (i.e., the creation of money, as the U.S. Federal Reserve has done to the tune of $1.5 trillion in the last couple of years) to help resolve the situation.
E.U. officials also made statements that more deficit reduction is needed by countries that are still in recession or barely recovering. The new agreement reached over the weekend partially reverses these statements, but not enough.
The pundits are quick to blame Greece and the other weaker European economies — Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Spain — for their problems. Although, like most of the world, these countries did have asset bubbles and other excesses during the boom years, they didn’t cause the world recession that sent their deficits skyrocketing.
Most importantly, the real problem now is that the E.U. and the I.M.F. are still offering them the medieval medicine of bleeding the patient. Until that changes, expect a lot more trouble ahead.
Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/13/opinion/13iht-edweisbrot.html

Oxymoron

10 billion Greek Euros to the fund for bank stability

143439.1

10 δισ. ευρώ στο Ταμείο σταθερότητας των τραπεζών 

 http://www.skai.gr/news/finance/article/143439/10-dis-euro-sto-tameio-statherotitas-ton-tranezon-/

Greek banks had made hyper profits in the past few years out of loans credit cards and illegal charges. When banks were taken to the court on those charges they chose  to keep paying the fines and continue to apply their illegal policy to small clients, ignoring the judicial authority.

Today the government is providing 10 billion euros out of money it doesn't have to support the bank's stability.

Why the boards do not call back the profits of the previous years to support their own business but instead they request from the people to take that role?

Why the banks are treated differently than any other business that belongs to the citizens?

Why the system allows for the banks to play a vital political role?

How the state went from controlling the banks to be depended of them?

Why the banks can claim the free market rules when they are to their benefit and ignore them when they are not?

Perhaps it is time for fundamental changes ...

 

160 Academics about Greek and EU financial crisis

Experts urge higher demand, wages in Greek response

By Klaus Lauer of Reuters
BERLIN - Europe can only tackle its debt and deficit problems if it accompanies the euro rescue package with growth measures including wage rises in Germany, 160 academics said in an open letter on the Greek crisis on Tuesday.
The group of mostly European economists said the $US1 trillion emergency package to stabilise the euro was "necessary but also long overdue and, most importantly, it is not enough on its own".
The letter, an initiative of Philip Arestis of Cambridge and Gustav Adolf Horn of IMK research institute, said Europe's belated policy response to Greece had been "driven by volatile market sentiments, populist politicians and a media that all too often exhibits fundamental ignorance about the issues".
"This has dramatically raised the costs and risks of resolving the crisis," read their letter.
Lamenting that spending cuts imposed on Greece "will only depress incomes, output and employment further, even as interest rates are driven up to crippling levels", the group said it was "profoundly the wrong course for Europe as a whole".
Listing the causes of Greece's fiscal woes as its inability to generate tax revenue, declining competitiveness due to rising labour costs and prices, external shock to the financial sector and high interest rates, the group said all but the first problems had a "strong European dimension and call for European solutions".
"In particular, the loss of competitiveness by Greece ... is the mirror image of an increase in relative competitiveness by others, notably Germany, Austria and the Netherlands," the academics wrote.
Greeks not lazy
Rejecting the media depiction of "lazy" Greeks, arguing they work longer hours than Germans with hourly labour productivity that has risen more than twice as fast as Germany since the euro was introduced in 1999, the economists said at the root of the competitiveness problem was nominal wage and price setting.
Greek nominal unit labour costs have risen by more than 30 per cent since the start of European Monetary Union, the experts argued, while in Germany they rose just eight per cent, creating wage and price divergencies not sustainable within a monetary union.
"Wages and prices in Greece and other countries need to fall in relative terms, but they must increase faster in Germany, whose aggressive wage moderation policies are deflationary, dampen domestic demand, export unemployment and threaten to explode the monetary union," the open letter said.
"This is the only way to re-balance the euro area while avoiding the huge risk of a deflationary spiral," it said.
Warning of the risk of a domino affect, with Portugal most exposed, the academics said lending public money to Greece was "not charity" but "in the vital interest of all Europeans".
So was the need to "resolve the Greek crisis on the basis of rising incomes across the continent".
They called on the European Central Bank to help with fiscal consolidation and re-balancing, which "in the short run ... means committing to maintaining its base rates close to zero".

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http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Experts-urge-higher-demand-wages-in-Greek-response-5CJ26?OpenDocument

The Games on the 'expense' of Greek people

                                                           European Hypocrisy
                                            The games on the 'expense' of Greece
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7fnJCmbuPU&feature=player_embedded

Money as debt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7fnJCmbuPU&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7fnJCmbuPU&feature=player_embedded

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7029185/MOV03538.MP4

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7029185/MOV03538.MP4

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7029185/MOV03538.MP4