Greece is under enormous pressure to privatize its water system. As the country drowns in debt, the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank (often referred to as the “troika”) work with eager Greek political parties to balance the books by selling off public water. Greece wouldn’t be the first place to privatize public water utilities during a fiscal crisis. Conditioning loans based on full or partial water privatization is an increasingly common practice of international lenders – and much criticized.
Commons Magazine | On the Commons
Greeks Stand Up to Protect Their Water From Privatization
Daniel Moss
(h/t P2P Foundation)
The neoliberal powers that be are determined to colonize Europe, just as their forefathers colonized the rest of the world. This is economic warfare.
5 comments:
I’m not sure that it’s specifically neo-liberalism that’s to blame here. Isn’t the central problem that Eurozone countries have signed up to a system which makes it impossible for a country that loses competitiveness to deal with the problem by devaluation. It’s left with the altrnatives of austerity or running up debts. And one way of paying off debts is selling your water supply.
No doubt neo-liberals welcome the freedom to buy up the Greek water supply system, but I wouldn’t describe neo-liberalism as the root cause of the problem here.
I think Neo liberalism was what drove Europe to form the Euro in the first place Ralph.... and drove Greece to accept it........ and drove Europe to the crisis........ and is driving the solutions.
Someone somewhere foresaw the potential of this "problem" and foresaw the solution too. I think turning Greece into a private resort for Northern Europe could have been a plan al along
See Greg Palast — Robert Mundell, evil genius of the euroGreg Palast — Robert Mundell, evil genius of the euro posted here at MNE.
The euro was a neoliberal plot from the get-go, which was bound to fail as Wynne Godley warned his fellow Brits, counseling against joining the EZ. When it failed as predicted, then the neoliberal eurocrats turned a bug into a feature by launching disaster capitalism and turning the periphery into colonies of the core, read German bankers.
And if truth be known, Hitler was just a front man, a tool, for the German elite of the time, whose backing he secured for his attempt to pay back Britain and France for the economic warfare they had launched against Germany's elite in WWI and the "peace" agreement.
Carlos Menem sold off the utilities, ripped out the trains ( public transport ), and stole millions for his henchmen during the neoliberal hey-days of the 1990's in Argentina.
The country was awash in U$D as much as ever in history during this time under Harvard neolib Cavallo economic minister or whatever was his name.
The Argentine peso was pegged to the U$D 1:1. It was not even necessary to totally switch to the U$D.
The amount of debt denominated in U$D was a matter of losing Argentine sovereignty.
Then Clinton balanced the budget and the huge crisis occurred in 2001 due to interest rate hikes here from the balancing of budget.
Today Argentine has what everyone else would love - inflation due to a healthy economy and healthy government spending. They have pushed out the U$D as a matter of sovereignty but there is still a gold bug push by many to find "hard currency" when the Argentine peso is not near the Mexican peso or even the Norwegian Kroner.
The problem is that wages do not keep up with inflation from exporting.
Sarcastically saying "What we need around here Milton Freidman, and a Hitler co team just like the bunch in Argentina and Chile, that will make everything ok economcially.
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