Terrorism is a notoriously difficult term to define. Our friends at Wikipedia (only proper research is good enough for the Fabians) suggest ‘violent acts which are intended to create fear, are perpetrated for a...ideological goal...disregard the safety of non-combatants and are committed by non-government agencies’. The part to highlight is ‘unlawful acts that bring terror’.
Terrorists, for lack of better terminology, bring terror to citizens; they are largely invisible and can strike at any moment. That is one way to describe Al-Qaida. It also describes Moody’s, the credit rating agency also known as "speculator".
This news may have missed the British press for obvious reasons (a blog is in the work, but that story keeps evolving), but Moody’s has recently downgraded Irish and Italian bonds to “junk” while also downgrading Portuguese, Spanish and Greek bonds further.
Perhaps not directly violent, but by calling Irish, Greek and Portuguese bonds “junk” and threatening Spain and Italy they are creating an atmosphere of fear for an ideological goal, namely neo-liberalism. No one buys PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain) or Irish bonds because someone on Wall Street feels uncomfortable. It’s time to get out the red flag, we got a fight on our hands. To take a page from the euro-sceptics book; they are stealing our sovereignty. Government is no longer creating policy, the IMF and other economic bodies are.
US based Moody’s, and other agencies, are spreading American neo-liberalist ideology on Europe; roll back the state, privatise, trust the unaccountable markets because democratically accountable government cannot be trusted, deregulate and so forth. The market never fails except for the periodic recessions in the US since 1790, about every fifty years, and the risk of depression in case of too much deregulation. Ireland during the 90’s was a neo-liberals dream, Ireland during 2010’s is the reality. There’s a host of reasons why Europe including Britain cannot adopt American ideology and why we must fight it; the cold war has been replaced by an invisible struggle which Europe, welfarism and social democracy is losing. This is our chance to fight back.
What do Moody’s stand to gain? Profit. They will make money from downgrading the status of nations and sending millions into poverty. On May 9th they even started spreading rumours that Greece had defaulted (Liberation, 09/05/11). The simple question is, why? Because they would have gained. The profits of rating agencies has tripled since 2006 (El Periodico, 14/07/11) at the cost of austerity and riots across Europe. This is literally a policy of “f*** the people”.
Not seething yet?
It gets worse. These agencies are holding our governments, the de jure tools of the people, to ransom. In an ideal setting, the Greek government would act on behalf of its people. Whether or not it does is a different matter (Greek politics is dominated by family lines and Athens-centric approach), but it cannot because these rating agencies alongside the IMF, WTO and the World Bank have tied the government’s hands and forced them into cuts.
What do these rating agencies actually do? Nurses, policemen, managers, they actually do something productive and meaningful. Speculators – I have no idea. They speculate? They downgrade? They make money? They seem to wake up in the morning, if they’re a bit queasy they’ll downgrade Spain, if they had Weatabix for breakfast they might feel more comfortable and keep things stable. They don’t even do a good job seeing as they failed to predict previous economic crises. So how’s this for a policy, Mr Miliband and Mr Schultz, ‘if you see a spectator, punch him. Hard’.
From the ashes, there will be a new economic order in Europe. Trichet predicts closer union, which is of course needed. I personally do not know what will emerge, but whatever it is needs to be guarded against speculators. We need an economic system not dictated by Wall Street, not tied to US ideology, and not incentivised through profit.
The EU is the body that can intervene. It is a damning assessment of the EU that the Charter of Human Rights refers to the “consumer” as much as the “citizen”. The hydra has 27 heads, which is a positive check on EU power, but it needs one voice. What happens in PIGS and the Eurozone affects us here in Britain. We need to rally against such agencies, kick them out of our system, build solidarity in Europe – solidarity that only social democracy and social democratic parties understand.
We need three things; regulation, protection and solidarity. Regulation, the anathema of neo-liberalism, is essential; the markets are as self-regulating as a child in a sweet store. There needs to be basic rules, and there are a few such as anti-monopoly rules, but we need more regulation. Regulation against irresponsibility, regulation to favour European workers and goods, regulation against unethical practises. Again, it is a mix of state intervention and market freedom; the European middle way.
Protectionism is not a dirty word except in neo-liberal circles. Protectionism is protection of jobs (as long as there is a concomitant encouragement and protection of home grown entrepreneurship), protection from foreign markets (the USA would not be in its dominant position without the tariffs of the early 20th Century), protection from speculation and rampant markets (commercial terrorists). It is the protection of liberty – the freedom from fear – not the reduction of it as is often claimed. It is a governments duty to protect its citizens from harm, whether that be from direct assault such as suicide bombs or from the economic woe instigated by commercial terrorists. But no country can go it alone, which is why there needs to be a middle way between the free market and protectionism; that middle way for Britain is Continentalism – a European free market protected from exterior sources. Together, in solidarity, we can create jobs, eliminate poverty within Europe, protect our citizens.
The European hydra says many different things if anything at all. Crisis unites, call it the “moral equivalent of war” (William James). Europe has had many tests. The first was the Iraq War, then the financial fiasco, now Libya and the continuing economic crisis. They are the big ones. And time and again the EU has been split if not silent. That is not a bad thing; it is important for power not to be concentrated in one area. But at times of crisis we need clarity, not one voice but 27 voices saying something similar and working for the common good, the common endeavour, namely getting out of the mess. But no one has heeded the call; Barosso remains silent, Van Rumpoy is president of a council not of a people or continent, the rotating presidency sets agenda more than anything else, Buzek is effectively speaker of parliament. Democracy means splintering power, it means inefficiency and frustration. Unity need not be institutional or constitutional, rather solidarity must be a path chosen by member states. The EU is more a network of states than a state itself (thank you Mark Leonard for that idea), Labour needs to strengthen S&D (the social democrat group) and its network. Then together we can fight US ideology, rating agencies, international markets, terrorists both Islamic and commercial.
In a nutshell; problem – the rating agencies; threat – economic downgrading creating austerity, unemployment, social inequality, crime and poverty; solution – a stronger European network, a real direction and voice (welfarism), kick out ratings agencies, turn back US ideology.
The vultures are circling once again, the Euro crisis will not go away until we shoot them and until we do the pound is not safe. Europe will get out of this mess, but it must ensure the result is a new system, and one without commercial terrorists. These regulators are pointless, dangerous, careless and are of no benefit to society. If we are serious about our message of social democracy and equality, stability and solidarity, we must strike these parasites hard and fast. We cannot rest until we do.
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