Bill Mitchell — EU Services Notification Directive will undermine democracy within cities

In a blog post last week – Financial services agreements – the EU as a neoliberal, corporatist project (November 13, 2018) – I wrote about the way the EU compromised the capacity of elected Member State governments to advance the well-being of their nations by the way they negotiate trade arrangements in services, particularly with respect to the financial services sector. For all those Europhiles that regularly deny the core agenda of the EU is to compromise democratic outcomes in favour of capital, that analysis, alone, should be sufficient to discourage those thoughts. Of course, that isn’t the only manifestation of this neoliberal, corporatist bias in the way the EU has developed over the last decades. I mostly conduct my analysis at the macroeconomic level but I am also interested (as my publication record demonstrates) in urban and regional analysis. At the level of the European city, the EU is behaving in the exactly the same way – to curb that ability of city authorities to render their cities favourable environments for the residents who live there....

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
EU Services Notification Directive will undermine democracy within cities
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Bill Mitchell — Financial services agreements – the EU as a neoliberal, corporatist project

I have been reading the new book by Costas Lapavitsas – ‘The Left Case Against the EU’ – which has been recently published. It is solid and clearly explains why the EU is not an institution or structure than anyone on the progressive Left should support or think is capable of reform any time soon. It has become a neoliberal, corporatist state and hierarchical in operation, with Germany at the apex bullying the weaker states into submission. Divergence in outcomes across the geographic spread is the norm. It is also the anathema of our concepts of democracy both in concept and operation. It is more like a cabal of elites who are unelected and, largely unaccountable. By giving their support to this monstrosity, the traditional Left political parties (social democrats, socialists etc) have been increasingly wiped out such is the anger of voters to what has become a massive coup by capital against labour. These are the themes that Thomas Fazi and I also explored in our recent book – Reclaiming the State: A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post-Neoliberal World (Pluto Books, 2017). I also just finished reading an interesting report – Financial Regulation challenged by European Trade Policy – published by the Veblen Institute and Finance Watch (October 2, 2018), which examines “the impact of European trade policy on financial regulation”. It is essential reading for those progressives who still think that Britain should remain in the EU. If they understand the research findings they would change their minds....

The underlying problem is the crush of empires, which has been the scourge of Europe for centuries after tribal conflict became conflict of nations and nations were combined by force into empires. The empires of old in Europe largely disappeared after WWI or remained in a vestigial state. On the other hand, new empires arose (America) and old empires began to wake up (Russia, China, Iran, Turkey), while India is also assuming an imperial presence as the nationalistic aftermath of the British Raj.

European elites see the handwriting on the wall. If they do not unite Europe into a empire of states, similar to the US as domestic empire of sovereign states, they will be dominated, as they are now by the US, and likely crushed in the future conflict of empires on their borders.

Neoliberal globalization American-style is imperial statism masquerading as individualism. The dialectical response is growing nationalism domestically as the "peasants" push back and growing multipolarism and militarism internationally as old and new power centers collide.

This pressure is only going to increase as the arms race unfolds and the developing world comes on line (China, India, Iran, Turkey). This will eventually spread to Latin America, with Brazil as the dominant power. Africa still hangs in the balance, but its large Islamic population predisposes it to a renewed Islamic empire like the Ottoman.

All part of the process of globalization. There's an intelligent way to do this systematically, and a random way to do it chaotically. Nature probably doesn't "care" about the route taken, although Nature "prefers" the principle of least action (efficiency). It's up to humans to add effectiveness based on purpose.

How will that purpose be determined and by whom?

If left to self-interested and unaccountable elites, the direction is pretty obvious—more conflict. The West under the US will be pursuing transnational corporate totalitarianism under Western (read US) leadership—because American exceptionalism.

Economists tend to ignore political issues of this scale, even though they are fundamentally economic, being about control of territory, population, and resources, both financial and real. However, these forces are determinative historically. Hence, they constitute "the big picture" in which long term trends are embedded socially and unfold in time.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Financial services agreements – the EU as a neoliberal, corporatist project
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Dennis Churilov — Were German Nazis and Soviet Socialists the Same?

There are so many people out there who genuinely believe that financial plutocrats like Soros are communists, and that Wall Street-sponsored Hillary Clinton is a socialist.

Many American self-proclaimed right-wingers seriously assert that the German Nazis were all socialists, simply because “Nazi” is short for ”Nationalsozialismus”, which translates as “National Socialism”. Therefore, they make a conclusion that the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were ideologically the same.

Sadly, this is the level of political and historical discourse many people are at at the moment.

German Fascism/Nazism and Soviet socialism were the polar opposites....

Fort Russ
Op-ed: Were German Nazis and Soviet Socialists the Same?

Dennis Churilov

Ramanan — Thomas Palley – Re-theorizing The Welfare State And The Political Economy Of Neoliberalism’s War Against It

Thomas Palley has a new paper:

The Case for Concerted Action

Thomas Palley – Re-theorizing The Welfare State And The Political Economy Of Neoliberalism’s War Against It

V. Ramanan

Ken Jacobson — Whose Corporations? Our Corporations!

Historically, corporations were understood to be responsible to a complex web of constituencies, including employees, communities, society at large, suppliers, and shareholders. But in the era of deregulation, the interests of shareholders began to trump all the others. How can we get corporations to recognize their responsibilities beyond this narrow focus? It begins in remembering that the philosophy of putting shareholder profits over all else is a matter of ideology which is not grounded in American law or tradition. In fact, it is no more than a dangerous fad. 

AlterNet
Whose Corporations? Our Corporations!
Ken Jacobson | senior editor for the newsletter Manufacturing & Technology News

also

3 Corporate Myths that Threaten the Wealth of the Nation

David M. Fields — David Ruccio on business, governance, and the new corporate university

Corporatization has already happened at the University of Iowa. Big stink over it, too. Faculty up in arms. Charges that the trustees acted unethically. The Republican governor is backing the trustees. Crapification soon to follow.

Without faculty governance—or, in Storbeck’s phrasing, “shared governance”—trustees will hire presidents who govern by decree in order to create and reinforce the corporate university. Then, students will be treated as customers, as passive recipients of an increasingly costly (and debt-accumulating) education, and the members of the faculty will be treated as employees, who in a pact with the devil will be paid to teach and conduct research and stay out of the key decisions facing the institution.

Radical Political Economy
David Ruccio on business, governance, and the new corporate university
David M. Fields

Chuck Spinney reviews Mike Lofgren's The Deep State

While Lofgren does not say so, I would argue there are growing signs that the emerging American political economy combines many elements of classical fascism and corporatism with neoliberal laissez faire economics into something that is new and peculiarly American — a political economy that exhibits fascist tendencies, but unlike classical fascism, subordinates the state to neoliberal corporatist interests, while it exploits many of fascism’s authoritarian organizing principles to stabilize the emerging status quo. Don’t take my word for it. Read Lofgren’s book, then think about how you would check or redefine the boxes in Figure 2 and draw your own conclusions.

One of the most important aspects of Lofgren's analysis, at least to my thinking, lies in his frequent reminders that the structural aspects of this current state of affairs are not the results of a centrally guided conspiracy hashed out in a smoke filled room. The “structure” of the contemporary American Deep State is more an emergent property triggered by the incremental give and take by thousands of players, whose successes and failures are conditioned by an interplay of chance and necessity, in what is really a cultural evolution. To be sure, there are lots of smoke filled rooms conspiring invisibly to play this game of chance and necessity, but they are competing with each other as well as cooperating -- and it is the evolutionary character of the Deep State that enables it to survive, adapt, and grow on its own terms, and that emergent character is what makes the Deep State so dangerously resistant to change.

The Blaster
Inside the Deep State

Chuck Spinney

I don't know whether Chuck Spinney realizes it, but he is making a strong argument against modern managerial and financial capitalism.

See also

American elites want to conquer every corner of the globe and make capitalism the one true faith.

Ever since the end of WWII there has been fearful speculation and warnings of a possible Third World War that always seemed just over the horizon; but what people didn’t realize is that WW3 had already begun. An ideological war was fought between the US-led capitalist camp and the USSR-led socialist and anti-imperialist alliance.

Much of this war was waged in secret by the CIA through use of propaganda, psychological warfare, economic sanctions, sabotage, funding and manipulation of political parties, assassinations and coups. This silent Cold War would from time to time break out into major “hot wars” (revolutions and counterrevolutions).

In 1991 WW3 came to an end with the defeat of the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc in eastern Europe. Following Soviet capitulation and defeat, the end of history was declared and President Bush I announced that there would be a new world order – the US would now be the world’s sole “superpower” and usher in a golden era of global capitalism with America at the helm.

WW3 had only just ended when World War 4 took over. The USSR had been defeated, but there was still a lot of work to do. A lot of territory, ideological and geographical, was left unconquered or had to now be consolidated and managed. For one thing, Red China remained, as well as other socialist countries such as Yugoslavia, Cuba and North Korea. The geostrategically and economically vital Middle East was also yet to be fully subdued.…

The Greanville Post
World War IV is Happening Now
Joseph Waters | Proletarian Center for Research, Education and Culture (Prole Center)


The National Interest
Great Power Pivot: U.S. Shifts Focus to War With China and Russia
Dave Majumdar

Robin Scher — Chomsky Interview: ‘The U.S. Is One of the Most Fundamentalist Countries in the World’

“Today’s Democrats, Clinton-style Democrats, are pretty much what used to be called moderate Republicans. And the Republicans just went way off the spectrum. They are so dedicated to service to wealth and the corporate sector that they simply cannot get votes on their own programs.”

Alternet
Chomsky Interview: ‘The U.S. Is One of the Most Fundamentalist Countries in the World’
Robin Scher, AlterNet

Don Quijones — Writing The New Rules For The 21st Century – In Secret?

...I’ll focus this post only on governance impacts and try to make the case, that this so-called trade agreement, if passed and implemented would create profound governance changes in the United States without benefit of the constitutional amendments that would normally be required to accomplish such changes. I’ll also make the case that the governance impacts destroy national sovereignty, state sovereignty, separation of powers, and democracy.

Raging Bull-Shit
Writing The New Rules For The 21st Century – In Secret?
Don Quijones

Joe Firestone — Fast/Track/TPP: The Death of National Sovereignty, State Sovereignty, Separation of Powers, and Democracy

The economics is horrible but the politics is catastrophic. This really is the road to serfdom under corporate totalitarianism as a New World Order in which everything is subordinate to property rights.

New Economic Perspectives
Fast/Track/TPP: The Death of National Sovereignty, State Sovereignty, Separation of Powers, and Democracy
Joe Firestone

Bill Black — Obama & TPP: Every One That Doeth Evil Hateth the Light

President Obama wants the world to know that he takes it personally that the Democratic Party’s base opposes his latest effort to sell out the people of the world to the worst corporations through the infamous Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal. Obama blurted out at a press conference a number of conservative Republican memes as his sole basis for pushing TPP. He then launched personal attacks on Senator Elizabeth Warren and labor leaders (without naming them). Obama, who is famous for keeping his cool when criticized by the GOP, is thin-skinned when criticized by Democrats. Obama never raged at the Republicans’ “death panel” attacks on him, but he raged at Warren as supposedly making an equivalently openly dishonest attack on TPP’s secret drafting process.

One of the most reprehensible aspects of TPP is that it is (still) being drafted in secret – that it from us, the people – but with corporate lobbyists literally drafting their wish list. Obama made the critical mistake of personally attacking Warren, which is roughly equivalent to a small town mayor launching a personal attack on Jon Stewart. You know the results will be that Stewart will wipe the floor with the mayor....

Serious smackdown. Bill gives Barack a "black eye."

Obama is the one who infamously told the bankers he was protecting them from the American people’s demands for the restoration of the rule of law so that the banksters would be held accountable for leading the fraud epidemics that drove the financial crisis and the Great Depression. Obama, being Obama, phrased that in the form of a vile slander of the American people, claiming that they wanted to use “pitchforks” rather than prosecutions.

Ouch.

TPP is the opposite of “free trade.” In the jargon of its economic supporters, it is a moldering midden hiding the secretly drafted “rent seeking” provisions designed to help CEOs enrich themselves at the expense of the people of the world. Adam Smith, who supported freer trade, warned over two centuries ago that when CEOs meet secretly it promptly turns into a conspiracy against the public interest and warned that CEOs use their power to aid their own interests at the expense of shareholders and the public. Smith’s warned that it “ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

Similarly, the even more conservative Frédéric Bastiat famously warned:

“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”

TPP is the legal system designed to authorize plunder with impunity....

The roundhouse punch.

Obama did not simply allow lobbyists to largely draft TPP in secret – he classified their drafts – treating them as national security secrets. This would be downright funny if it were not so wicked....

Because "national security."

OMG, the religious right was right. Obama is Satan!

TPP is a deal that Obama, the failed economists, and the CEOs knew could not survive the light. They were aware of the truth of Justice Brandeis’ famous observation that “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” TPP was drafted in secret to avoid that disinfectant. People who are doing straight up deals in the public interest would never allow lobbyists to draft the deal and would have welcomed criticisms of their drafts. The secret drafting of TPP largely by the CEOs’ lobbyists was designed to maximize the ability of CEOs to plunder...

Read the whole screed. It's Bill in all his awesomeness.

New Economic Perspectives
Obama & TPP: Every One That Doeth Evil Hateth the LightWilliam K. Black | Associate Professor of Economics and Law, UMKC

Dessert.

The actual purpose of his column, however, was to smear any member of Congress (and he singled out Senator Elizabeth Warren as his example) who opposes TPP as not simply economically ignorant, “failing” a “no brainer” exam, but also engaged in “mendacity.” Given that mendacity is Mankiw’s primary area of expertise – and that President Obama soon joined Mankiw in claiming that Warren was lying in her criticisms of TPP – I thought someone should respond to Mankiw

Smackdown follows.

Bill fails Mankiew in Economics 101. As a former philosophy prof. I give him and F in Ethics 101.

Mankiw: "“it would be irrational for savings and loans [CEOs] not to loot.”

So it's OK.

Mankiw Mendacity and Morality and his League of Failed Economists

Bill Moyers & Co. Morning Reads: The Koch Five, SEC Faces Pressure on Disclosure, Tech Lobby Spending Explodes

More links on money in politics and pushback against it: "Democracy is at stake."

Bill Moyers & Co.
Morning Reads: The Koch Five, SEC Faces Pressure on Disclosure, Tech Lobby Spending Explodes

Andrea Germanos — Majority of Germans: We Don't Have a Real Democracy

Over 60 percent of Germans said their country did not have a true democracy because business has a bigger say than the electorate, the survey by the Emnid polling institute for the Free University of Berlin found. 

The finding echoes results of a previous study in the U.S. that found a similar percentage opposed the 2010 Citizens United decision that opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate spending on elections, and said that the voices of the electorate were being drowned out by big-moneyed interests. 

Twenty percent of the German respondents also said that improved living conditions will be achieved through revolution, not reforms, and a third of respondents said that capitalism was the root of hunger and poverty.…

The Local reports that the poll shows "a public much further to the left than previously thought."

Common Dreams
Majority of Germans: We Don't Have a Real Democracy
Andrea Germanos, staff writer

Michael Perelman: Globalization, “Free Trade,” and Food as a Strategic Weapon

In 1969, Charles Kindleberger presciently observed the rise of corporate power relative to the government within the context of international trade, predicting, “the nation state is just about through as an economic unit.” 

More recently Wolfgang Reinicke went further, concluding: “Global corporate networks challenge a state’s internal sovereignty by altering the relationship between the private and public sectors. By inducing corporations to fuse national markets, globalization creates an economic geography that subsumes multiple political geographies. A government no longer has a monopoly of the legitimate power over the territory within which corporations operate, as the rising incidence of regulatory and tax arbitrage attests.” 

Reinicke even suggested that this globalization was trending toward a form of anarchy. If anarchy constitutes the absence of government, this aspect of globalization might seem to be a move toward a special kind of anarchy what may be called anarchism for the rich and powerful. 

In his “Politics as a Vocation,” Max Weber suggested a broader interpretation of this seeming anarchism. After citing Trotsky saying, “Every state is founded on force,” he went on to note, “The state is considered the sole source of the ‘right’ to use violence.” From Weber’s perspective, globalization is actually empowering the state. 

The same progress in information technologies that that created a utopian belief in the possibility of worldwide democracy, facilitated the growth of globalization that made the new anarchy possible is also being used around the world to rapidly increase authoritarian powers, which now have the capacity to monitor virtually everything that ordinary people do. So, while one part of society enjoys the privacy that this new regime of secrecy provides, the rest of society has been rapidly losing what little remains of its privacy. 

In effect, alongside the global redistribution of wealth and income, globalization also seems to be redistributing people’s rights. So far, I have been unable to detect any effective response to this troubling trend.…

Oligarchic anarchism.

Naked Capitalism
Globalization, “Free Trade,” and Food as a Strategic Weapon
Michael Perelman | Professor of Economics at California State University, Chico

Mike Ludwig — WikiLeaks Reveals Global Trade Deal Kept More Secret Than the Trans-Pacific Partnership

Another shoe drops.

Embattled WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange announced Wednesday from London the publication of a secret draft text of the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), a controversial global trade agreement said to make it easier for corporations to make profits and operate with impunity across borders. 

The whistleblower and transparency website WikiLeaks published on Thursday the secret draft text of the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) Financial Services Annex, a controversial global trade agreement promoted by the United States and European Union that covers 50 countries and is opposed by global trade unions and anti-globalization activists. 

Activists expect the TISA deal to promote privatization of public services in countries across the globe, and WikiLeaks said the secrecy surrounding the trade negotiations exceeds that of even the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) that has made headlines in the past year. 

Demonstrations erupted in Geneva in April as diplomats met in secret for the sixth round of negotiations over TISA, which would cover international trade in a wide range of service industries ranging from finance and telecommunications to transportation and even local utilities such as water. Protesters demanded that the draft text be released, but it has remained secret until now. 

Public Services International (PSI), a global trade union federating public service workers in 150 countries, has reported that TISA threatens to allow multinational corporations to permanently privatize vital public services such as healthcare and transportation in countries across the world. 

"This agreement is all about making it easier for corporations to make profits and operate with impunity across borders," said PSI General Secretary Rosa Pavanelli in response to the leak. "The aim of public services should not be to make profits for large multinational corporations. Ensuring that failed privatizations can never be reversed is free-market ideology gone mad."

Truthout
WikiLeaks Reveals Global Trade Deal Kept More Secret Than the Trans-Pacific Partnership
Mike Ludwig, Truthout | Report

Making it personal:

Assange said he continues to be the target of "the largest ever criminal investigation into a publisher by the US Department of Justice," and demanded that Attorney General Eric Holder end its investigation of WikiLeaks or resign. He also warned President Obama about leaving office with a legacy that includes "extrajudicial killings, including those of Americans" and chilling free speech by targeting more journalists for investigation than "all other presidents combined."

President Obama is in the running to go down in history as worse than George W. Bush and Bush even had massive assistance from Dick Cheney in racking up his abysmal record. Obama did all by himself, contradicting much of what he had promised previously. History is not going to look on this kindly, and I would like to see the lot of them before the Hague for crime against humanity. Is this how "the American experiments" ends?

Don Quijones — A Message to the Bilderberg Group from a Dead President

Building the global transnational corporate state .

This weekend, around 100 of the most powerful luminaries from the worlds of politics, business, finance and media will be converging on a luxury hotel in Denmark for two days of secret deliberations (you can see a full list of the attendees here). Among the rather ominous topics under discussion will be the “future of democracy”, privacy, intelligence sharing, the sustainability of the economic recovery, Ukraine and the “new architecture” of the Middle East.

There is no way for the public to know what is said behind the hotel´s closed doors, for all the guests and hotel staff are sworn to secrecy. And while the media is finally beginning to tentatively report on the Bilderberg Group after a universal blackout lasting decades, not a single mainstream publication will dare to address the massive conflicts of interests posed by our supposed elected representatives meeting clandestinely with the leaders of some of the world’s most powerful corporations.

Raging Bull-shit
A Message to the Bilderberg Group from a Dead President
Don Quijones

John Vidal — Corporations and wealthy elites now control more than 75 percent of the world’s farmland

The world’s food supplies are at risk because farmland is becoming rapidly concentrated in the hands of wealthy elites and corporations, a study has found. 

Small farmers, the UN says, grow 70% of the world’s food but a new analysis of government data suggests the land which they control is shrinking every year as mega-farms and plantations squeeze them onto less than 25% of the world’s available farmland, says international land-use group Grain. These mega-farms are less productive in terms of amount of food they produce per area of land, the report argues.

“Small farms have less than a quarter of the world’s agricultural land – or less than 20% excluding China and India. Such farms are getting smaller all the time, and if this trend persists they might not be able to continue to feed the world,” says the report which draws on government statistics and calls for a stop on land grabbing by corporations.

The Raw Story
Corporations and wealthy elites now control more than 75 percent of the world’s farmland
John Vidal, The Guardian

Capitalism leads to consolidation, and consolidation to monopoly capital.

Samantha Lachman — Third Way's Attacks On Elizabeth Warren Resurface In Close Senate Race

The feud between Third Way and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has surfaced in a way the corporate-backed think tank probably didn't intend.

After Warren sent a fundraising email on behalf of Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), the campaign of Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), his opponent in the Senate race, noted that Third Way co-founder Matt Bennett had called Warren's economic message "catastrophically antibusiness" at the 2012 Democratic National Convention.

The Huffington Post
Third Way's Attacks On Elizabeth Warren Resurface In Close Senate Race
Samantha Lachman

Eric W. Dolan — ‘Oligarchic tendencies’: Study finds only the wealthy get represented in the Senate (via Raw Story )

‘Oligarchic tendencies’: Study finds only the wealthy get represented in the Senate (via Raw Story )

Members of the U.S. Senate do not respond equally to the views of all their constituents, according to research to be published in Political Research Quarterly next month. Senators overall represent their wealthiest constituents, while those on bottom…

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Volatility — Corporatism and Globalization: The Context of the TTIP and TPP

Perhaps the best way to prove the tyrannical intentions of the globalizers is to start with their own words. If we look at the manifestoes and comments issued by the various business consortiums, industry groups, and individual corporations, we find the unvarying demand that all government action be subordinated to the corporate profit prerogative, and that no other value be allowed to interfere with this.

This is why I call corporations and their intent totalitarian. My definition of this term: A powerful person or entity is relentless in pursuit of an imperative, at every moment wants to enforce the domination of that imperative to the fullest extent possible, and refuses to recognize the right of any other value to exist at all. A totalitarian may or may not be willing to “tolerate” the existence of something purely extraneous. But where there’s any conflict between the corporate domination imperative and any other value, it’s taken for granted there can be no compromise. The non-corporate value must submit, if necessary to the point of its own extinction. As the historical record makes clear, this is true of all human values – health, happiness, prosperity, culture, tradition, religion, morality, simple human decency and fairness. None of these can coexist with corporations. In the long run these must all go extinct, if corporatism continues to exist.

Volatility
Corporatism and Globalization: The Context of the TTIP and TPP
Russ

Here is a comment I left elsewhere on a related matter that fits here:

The underlying problem is not economic per se but actually political, resulting from capture on a vast scale by an elite determined to carve the pie in its favor. This involves institutional capture, intellectual capture, regulatory capture, and even state capture.

Unemployment, boom-bust cycles, imperfect competition, and the rest of the pimples on the face of neoclassical economic theory in its application, including contemporary mainstream so-called Keynesianism, result from not only flawed theory but also neoliberal policies that are rationalized by academia in the pay of the elite to dupe the rubes and deliver the goods to the top.

The essences of neoliberal "capitalism" is crony capitalism, and its political counterpart is the corporate state masquerading as the market state. Just as the excess of socialism is totalitarian communism; so too, the excess of capitalism is totalitarian fascism.