MARKETS? BUT WHO ARE THE MARKETS?

MARKETS? BUT [HECK] WHO ARE THE MARKETS? trGgl

Executives tell us that they are not, but markets, while the powers that governments have no choice but to develop policies to reduce labor and social rights.   With the help of the media and persuasion, governments attempt to introduce such a policy is determined by external forces over which they have very little influence. Their major argument is that it is necessary to "give confidence to such external agents: the financial markets." We must reduce the deficit and public debt, and you have to drive down wages and weaken unions in order to calm the markets so that they lend their money to the Spanish state, thus allowing you to pay your expenses.   There are the financial markets, but mainly banks, insurance companies and hedge funds that have Spanish almost half of Spanish public debt. Most of the other half is owned banks, insurance companies and European hedge funds, many of them related to the same Spanish funds. Only a fraction of the foreign financial institutions have (ie outside the EU).   The "markets" are controlled by a tiny number of people (managers, governors and shareholders), less than 0.1% of the population benefiting from the state to have to pay up to 7% interest to get money borrowed from banks to which the State must pay, money that comes from cuts in public spending on pensions, health, education, schools, kindergartens, home services for dependent persons, among others. The classes have to tighten the belt so that the state can pay our financial bourgeoisie, to which our state has been reducing their taxes and help, with millions of euros to keep the financial system collapsed as a result of the speculative practices brick burst the bubble they created.   That financial bourgeoisie has received an enormous amount of money from the European Central Bank (ECB), which is a public institution (its leaders are appointed by the states of the Eurozone, including the Spanish Government), which is in practice controlled by the institutions European Union financial. The ECB prints billion euros and gives banks the 1%, which speculate and buy government debt at exorbitant interest some.   The second erroneous assumption is to assume that there is no alternative to reliance that states have private banking. The state can generate based resources, for example, increase, rather than down, taxes on banking, to investment income and higher income. And the ECB, rather than giving money to banks, it could lead to states to buy their debt at the same interests as gives them to the bench. But it does not, which the state has to borrow from the bank. A virtuous circle for the banking and disastrous for the states.   But things have further deteriorated because when the ECB has started to send money to buy government debt states, the ECB (which is the lobby of the bank) has imposed draconian conditions, summarized in a frontal assault on the classes and its welfare state.   There are, therefore, financial markets, but our financial bourgeoisie, allied with the European financial bourgeoisie, who are controlling our public institutions, they tell us there are no alternatives. And for the most abuse, our political representatives want to assure that banks never lose money. This means that states must pay them the money they supposedly always owed. All this is presented with the argument that there are no alternatives.   But there are alternatives. States can control the banks, rather than the reverse, by, for example, public banks. And putting the ECB may change the service of the population and the productive economy, not the banking service. Who do not should not be the power of markets, but to the excessive political and media influence our financial bourgeoisie.   by Vicente Navarro Professor of Public Policy at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Fuente: El Libre Pensador