Reed Richardson — Media Ignoring Puerto Rico’s ‘Shock Doctrine’ Makeover

Nearly five months after Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, more than a hundred thousand US citizens there still lack clean drinking water, and almost one-third of the island has no reliable electric power. As initial life-sustaining recovery efforts still grind toward completion, Puerto Rico’s Gov. Ricardo Rosselló has wasted no time using his territory’s recovery as an opportunity to push a number of policy proposals right out of the “disaster capitalism” playbook: from privatizing the island’s power utility to converting nearly all of its public schools to charters.

And while the mainstream US press has been mainly focused on the Trump administration’s woeful institutional response to the storm, it has barely noticed this much more radical political transformation of Puerto Rico, and the potentially disastrous long-term consequences for the citizens who live there.

Ever since Maria made landfall on September 20, the corporate press has been neglecting the island in its coverage. Despite ranking second behind 2005’s Hurricane Katrina for property damage and lives lost, Maria has drawn markedly less media attention than the two major hurricanes that preceded it last summer.…

… under the “shock doctrine,” disasters are to be exploited, not mitigated—and the main role of the corporate press is not to notice.

FAIR
Media Ignoring Puerto Rico’s ‘Shock Doctrine’ Makeover
Reed Richardson

See also

Republican Senator Marco Rubio called for the Venezuelan Armed Forces to rebel against the government, in a series of inflammatory tweets posted on Friday. The Secretary of State has hinted at support for a coup d’etat....

RT

Senator Rubio calls for military coup in Venezuela

Matias Vernengo — The Latin American Crisis

Matias Verengo sums up the Latin American crises, present and past. Manufactured.

Naked Keynesianism
The Latin American Crisis
Matias Vernengo | Associate Professor of Economics, Bucknell University

Kate Aronoff — Disaster Capitalists Take Big Step Toward Privatizing Puerto Rico’s Electric Grid

Never let a crisis go to waste.

The Intercept

Disaster Capitalists Take Big Step Toward Privatizing Puerto Rico’s Electric Grid

Kate Aronoff

Raúl Ilargi Meijer — The EU Uses Every Crisis To Grab More Power

Disaster Capitalism is alive and well.

The Automatic Earth

The EU Uses Every Crisis To Grab More Power

Raúl Ilargi Meijer

Sean Guillory — Ukraine is ripe for the shock doctrine

Serial rapists and their willing victims. Sadomasochism?

Open Democracy
Ukraine is ripe for the shock doctrine

Sean Guillory

Elysse Morgan — Greece should turn to China to break debt spiral, economist John Perkins says

A prominent economist says China's banks are circling debt-stricken countries like Greece, offering an alternative to the brutal austerity measures proposed by the International Monetary Fund and European Union.

Former adviser to the IMF and the World Bank, John Perkins, told the ABC's The Business that China's Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the BRICS bank were courting countries like Greece.

Mr Perkins said he believed China had sent people to Greece to offer an alternative bailout deal.

"If I were the finance minister running the system I would seriously be looking at that alternative. I think that the Chinese are presenting a competitive edge here," he said.

Mr Perkins revealed in his international bestseller, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, how international organisations like the IMF and the World Bank enslave countries like Greece by offering crippling and unsustainable loans which never deliver the economic growth they promise.…

ABC (AU)
Greece should turn to China to break debt spiral, economist John Perkins says
Elysse Morgan, finance reporter

Steve Keen — Wolfgang Schäuble, The Trust Troll

Schäuble was clearly the primary architect of the Troika’s dictat for Greece. One only has to compare its language to that used by Schäuble in his OpEd in the New York Times three months ago (“Wolfgang Schäuble on German Priorities and Eurozone Myths”, April 15 2015). There he stated that “My diagnosis of the crisis in Europe is that it was first and foremost a crisis of confidence, rooted in structural shortcomings”, and that the essential factor in ending the crisis was the restoration of trust:

The cure is targeted reforms to rebuild trust — in member states’ finances, in their economies and in the architecture of the European Union. Simply spending more public money would not have done the trick — nor can it now.

Compare this to the first line of the communique:

The Eurogroup stresses the crucial need to rebuild trust with the Greek authorities as a pre‐requisite for a possible future agreement on a new ESM programme.

The policies in the document match those in Schäuble’s OpEd as well. Schäuble called for:

more flexible labor markets; lowering barriers to competition in services; more robust tax collection; and similar measures.

The Troika’s document forces these measures upon Greece. These include “the broadening of the tax base to increase revenue”, “rigorous reviews of collective bargaining, industrial action and collective dismissals” and “ambitious product market reforms”

Build trust means take apart the welfare state and replace with a market state owned by foreign interests and a domestic oligarchy.

This cannot in any sense be seen as an economic document, since an economic document would have to assess the feasibility of its proposals. Instead it simply states Schäuble’s ideology: regardless of your economic circumstances, simply implement these (so-called) market-oriented reforms, restore trust, and your economy will grow.

This is in spite of the fact that even very conservative economist admit that under this plan the Greek economy won't grow. The plan is obvious aimed at something else and that appears to looting Greece unless it is Greek colonization. It's one or the other, or both.

The other possibility, which Keen prefers, is that Greece is being used to set an example and this economically inexplicable behavior is "punishment." There may be some of that involved, too. It plays well with the propaganda about lazy Greeks. Here they are getting their due and being taught a lesson.

But the fact remains that Greece is being looted by the usual suspects. Considering that to be an unintended consequence seems very farfetched to me, especially give the history, which Keen does not provide here.

Does Wolfgang Schäuble stand to profit from this himself?

Forbes
Wolfgang Schäuble, The Trust Troll
Steve Keen | Professor and Head Of School Of Economics, History & Politics, Kingston University, London

Raúl Ilargi Meijer — Was Greece Set Up To Fail?

Michael Hudson has described in principle how a country is looted. Ilargi fills in the detains regarding Greece. Economic hitman John Perkins has also provided details of other instances and how it applies to Greece. Naomi Klein also describes it in The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Ukraine is undergoing a similar process now. First bankrupt the country, then loot it.

All this is taking place under the cover of corporate media propaganda that blames the victims.

It's a well-oiled machine. Which country is next on the list? Is is yours?

The Automatic Earth
Was Greece Set Up To Fail?
Raúl Ilargi Meijer

For links on Greece see also

Debt Rattle July 18 2015

Chris Sturr — Report from Greece, plus more links on Greece

One thing is clear: this insanity is what “Disaster Capitalism” — not democracy — looks like! — Mike Epitropoulos

Dollars & Sense Blog
Report from Greece, plus more links on Greece
Chris Sturr

alexrpt — Let the fire sale begin! Greece is ready to finalize a 1.2 billion euro deal with Germany to operate regional airports and ports

The EZ core colonizing the periphery. "Never let a good crisis go to waste."

Greece is now more than willing to move ahead on key asset sales to appease lenders…and it all begins with selling big chunks of Greek infrastructure operations to Germany.

Red Pill Times
Let the fire sale begin! Greece is ready to finalize a 1.2 billion euro deal with Germany to operate regional airports and ports

alexrpt

Richard D. Wolff — Scapegoat Economics 2015

As economic crises, declines and dislocations increasingly hurt or threaten people around the globe, they provoke questions. How are we to understand the forces that produced the 2008 crisis, the crisis itself, with its quick bailouts and stimulus programs, and now the debts, austerity policies and deepening economic inequalities that do not go away? Economies this troubled force people to think and react. Some resign themselves to "hard times" as if they were natural events. Some pursue individual strategies trying to escape the troubles. Some mobilize to fight whoever they blame for it all. Many are drawn to scapegoating, usually encouraged by politicians and parties seeking electoral advantages.…..

When it works, such politics sets one part of the population suffering from capitalist relocation, crisis and austerity policy against another part. This permits big banks, large corporations and the rich, who own and direct them - those with the most responsibility for causing the crisis - to escape paying for it. They escape in part because their wealth and power made sure that they benefited first and most from the government bailouts in 2008 to 2010. They also escape because scapegoat economics enables them and their political friends to shift the burden of paying for the crisis onto certain of its victims while "protecting" other victims from further victimization. Perhaps capitalism inherited scapegoat economics from prior economic systems, but capitalism's crises keep renewing that ugly injustice.

"Never let a good crisis go to waste." Along with "divide and conquer," "shift the blame," and "nice guys finish last."

Truthout | News Analysis
Scapegoat Economics 2015

Richard D. Wolff | Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City

Yves Smith — Has America’s Use of Finance as a Foreign Policy Tool Backfired?

A new article at American Interest by Ben Judah titled How Offshore Finance Sank Western Soft Power makes a forceful case that unbridled finance, specifically, the nexus between tax havens and looting plutocrats, has undermined one of the West’s most important assets, its claim to have a more virtuous political and economic model. I strongly suggest you read the article in full. 

 It's actually much, much worse that this.

Why do Russians call democracy "dermokratsia" (English translation = shitocracy)?

Capitalism and democracy are antithetical.

Actually, as Yves explains, it's even worse than that. Mix capitalism with criminality. This post is an eye-opener even for those who know how bad the deal is.

Oh, and Larry Summers is right at the heart of it, so even though it is a neoliberal thing, it's also Democratic neoliberalism. The GOP has no corner on neoliberalism. It's thoroughly bipartisan.

The upshot? Global instability as US soft power erodes in a sea of corruption and the emerging world loses confidence in the American model of democratic capitalism.

But as Ed Luce of the Financial Times has pointed out, the alternative to the weakening of US power isn’t to accelerate the rise of a replacement, but to usher in more instability.

Naked Capitalism
Has America’s Use of Finance as a Foreign Policy Tool Backfired?
Yves Smith

Samuel Charap and Lee Feinstein — Obama’s Quiet Offensive

Apparently President Obama had encirclement in mind all along and the crisis in Ukraine has provided the opportunity to forge ahead with it, even as the US makes its Asia pivot to encircle China, too. Who knew the president was a closet neocon masquerading as a progressive?

Project Syndicate
Obama’s Quiet Offensive

Samuel Charap, Senior Fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and Lee Feinstein, a former US ambassador to Poland, is a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States

Thomas H. Greco — Russia being squeezed by the New World Order

Even a casual observer of recent geopolitical history can see the pattern of encirclement, neutralization, and domination that has characterized western policies over the past several decades. It is clear that the consolidation of power and the imposition of the global fascist New World Order is all but complete and that all remaining obstacles must be removed, one way or another.

Beyond Money | Devoted to the liberation of money and credit, and the restoration of the commons

Russia being squeezed by the New World Order
Thomas H. Greco

Like I've been saying.

David Ferguson — Cruz lashes out at Senate GOP over shutdown failure (via Raw Story )

Cruz lashes out at Senate GOP over shutdown failure (via Raw Story )

In remarks to an Iowa Republican group on Friday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said that his government shutdown and debt default plan would have worked at repealing the Affordable Care Act — also known as Obamacare — if Senate Republicans had only backed…

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PRWatch — Pete Peterson Exposed: The "Grand Bargain" Hoax

Pete Peterson Exposed: The "Grand Bargain" Hoax

PRWatch

karoli — Obamacare Is Right-Wing Proxy For Social Security and Medicare

Despite all the sound and fury about Obamacare, here's the truth: It's not the prime target of the right. The real targets are Medicare and Social Security, as Rep. Barton admits in the video above when he says he wants "real reforms in entitlements".

Over the past couple of weeks, it's become apparent to me and many others that this entire showdown is not over Obamacare. The ACA is a convenient patsy because it is new, untested, and they've managed to poison public opinion around it over the past three years.
The real target is Social Security and Medicare. From a political standpoint, waging a war using those programs as hostage would be so wildly unpopular no sane or insane politician would dare choose that route. And so Obamacare has become the convenient stand-in, a cardboard stand-in for their real goals.

As Diane noted in her post here, the New York Times published an exposé showing how this strategy formed over the months since Barack Obama's re-election. As usual, it was financed and formed by the Kochs and their right-wing partners. But the Kochs are hardly the only players in this particular round of attacks.

Attacking the safety net from the 'left'

Billionaire Pete Peterson has been instrumental in creating a campaign to kill Social Security and Medicare that gives the appearance of coming from the left. His "FixTheDebt" campaign launched in 2011 was crafted to fool centrists and even those calling themselves liberals into believing there was a crisis afoot that must be fixed.

In many ways, Peterson's astroturf campaign has been far more insidious than the Koch effort, if for no other reason than the way they try to disguise themselves as "independent" and "centrist" with left-leaning roots.

Read the rest. The real rightist agenda and strategy exposed. "Disaster capitalism" as articulated in her eponymous book is the favored tactic of neoliberalism in attacking popular programs. Now they are going for the throat of the welfare state all out in order to replace it with the neoliberal "market state" run by crony capitalism to complete the process of enclosure through privatization in the name of "freedom" (theirs) and "efficiency" (in looting).

Crooks & Liars
Obamacare Is Right-Wing Proxy For Social Security and Medicare
karoli

See also

The Wichita Eagle

Rep. Pompeo: Shutdown is about substantial entitlement reform
Bill Wilson

In a wide-ranging interview, the Republican congressman from Wichita voiced his discomfort with the ongoing shutdown, while dismissing the Oct. 17 debt ceiling deadline set by Treasury Secretary Jack Lew as “not a magical date” and proclaiming that Republicans will agree to raise the debt ceiling when Democrats agree to reform Social Security, Medicare and the president’s signature health care law.

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers — People Across America Are Waking Up to the Effects of 'Disaster Capitalism' -- a Much Better Way of Life Is Possible

In her book Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein explains how crises are used by governments to distract and frighten people so that unpopular and exploitative policies can be pushed through. 

It seems that now there is a different reaction disaster capitalism. Rather than disasters providing cover for the implementation of dangerous capitalist policies that lower wages and increase the wealth divide, the disasters being caused by these dangerous policies have woken the public and are leading to a more active and empowered people.

We face a triple threat of the “e”crises - in the economy, environment and energy - which are all connected, says journalist and academic Nafeez Ahmed, but rather than allowing them to overwhelm and weaken us, people are rising to the challenge of solving these crises through direct confrontation with the forces that created them and by building alternative solutions. People are taking initiative rather than waiting for leaders.

AlterNet

People Across America Are Waking Up to the Effects of 'Disaster Capitalism' -- a Much Better Way of Life Is Possible
Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

Michael Stephens — The “Success” of the Greek Bailouts

Along with ideology and pet economic theories, C. J. Polychroniou suggests another (far more cynical) interpretation [than the failure of austerity as a policy]. The bailout programs, he says, aresucceeding in some respects; the problem is that we may be incorrectly assuming what the main priorities are:

"Amazingly enough, in the face of this ongoing and uncontrolled catastrophe, and despite the IMF’s admission that it misjudged the impact of austerity on Greece’s economy and its people, IMF and EU officials remain as committed as ever to the policies responsible for Greece’s collapse. But while many seem surprised by this apparently contradictory posture, they shouldn’t be. The austerity “shock treatments” administered by the IMF and the EU have two explicit goals: (1) to ensure that the loans are paid back no matter what the cost, and (2) to roll back the average standard of living in order to create highly favorable conditions for international business-investment opportunities and to increase the rate of profit for the corporate and financial elite at home. It is an avowedly class-warfare approach, cloaked in the organization’s holier-than-thou rhetoric about the overall benefits of a neoliberal economic order and the economic drag created by organized labor and workers’ rights, social welfare provisions, and decent wages."

Doh. That was the neoliberal goal from the get-go and it hasn't changed a bit. It's straight up "disaster capitalism" as laid out by Naomi Klein. In fact, although the context is different, the policy is actually quite similar to the assassination of President Allende and installation of General Pinochet in Chile. Neoliberalism is antithetical to democracy and treats workers as a commodity in "the labor market." When C. J. Polychroniou says "roll back the average standard of living," this means reduction in the real wage, and lowering of benefits and protection for workers as well as public services. This is also an opportunity to privatize public resources and enclose more of the commons in order to monetize it "for greater efficiency" through market disciline.

Multiplier Effect
The “Success” of the Greek Bailouts
Michael Stephens

Greg Palast shows how this was the intention of the creators of the EZ, Robert Mundell, evil genius of the euro — For the architect of the euro, taking macroeconomics away from elected politicians and forcing deregulation were part of the plan

Toby Barlow — Emergency Manager Wants to Sell Off City's Precious Art, While Banks Get Fatter

Here's a modest proposal: let the banks auction their art to cover damages from blighted, foreclosed properties.

AlterNet
Emergency Manager Wants to Sell Off City's Precious Art, While Banks Get Fatter
Toby Barlow | The Weeklings

Why not just sell some of the people chronically on the dole into slavery? That's were this is headed, except slaves get a subsistence wage high enough to feed their offspring. The way this is headed that would be luxury.