global-recession | Andy Roberts

Zapatero’s socialists defeated by People’s party in regional elections

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/05/23/zapateros-socialists-defeated-by-peoples-party-in-regional-elections

Results seen as protest vote against Spain’s José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s handling of the Spanish economy since 2008This article titled “Zapatero’s socialists defeated by People’s party in regional elections” was written by Giles Tremlett in Madrid, for The Guardian on Monday 23rd May 2011 17.28 UTCThe socialist party of Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is licking its wounds after defeat by the conservative opposition People’s party (PP) in municipal and regional elections.In what was widely seen as a protest vote against Zapatero himself and his handling of Spain’s economy, his party lost control of key city halls in places such as Barcelona and Seville while the PP took control of most of the country’s powerful regional governments.The central Castilla La Mancha region, Aragon and the Balearic islands all ejected socialist administrations.“We are aware of the situation that had distanced people from our party and caused them to criticise us with their vote or abstention,” party spokesman José Blanco said.The socialist drubbing came just 10 months before a general election and appeared to clear the way for PP leader Mariano Rajoy to take possession of the prime minister’s Moncloa Palace residence on his third attempt.The voting coincided with the eruption of numerous popular protests against established politics across Spain, with demonstrators camping out in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol and in dozens of other cities. A backdrop of 21% unemployment and sluggish growth has spread pessimism throughout Spain as the country struggles to find its feet after the 2008 crash.The socialists lost one in five voters on Sunday, compared to the municipal elections of 2007. Not all those votes were picked up by other mainstream parties, however, and the number of spoilt ballots doubled. But overall turnout was a high 66%.Zapatero is blamed by some for mismanaging a debt crisis that saw Spain on the edge of disaster last year. Others dislike the austerity measures he has since imposed in order to avoid a Portuguese- or Greek-style debacle in Spain.His popularity has plunged since a U-turn last year saw him bring in a strict deficit-cutting plan, which he has pledged to stick to, along with labour and pensions reforms.Markets reacted nervously to the poll result on Monday, pushing up the price of Spanish bonds and pushing down Spanish share prices.The PP urged Zapatero to call a snap general election. “Zapatero and the whole socialist party must reflect on what has happened. Spain cannot waste another year like this,” said the party’s general secretary María Dolores de Cospedal.The one socialist leader to have survived Sunday’s debacle, the head of the Extramadura regional government Guillermo Fernández, also suggested that an early general election might be considered.The socialists must first choose a new leader to take them into those elections, with deputy prime minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba and defence minister Carme Chacón as favourites.Party officials said that a timetable for electing the new leader would be set on Saturday.With a general election due in Portugal on 5 June, and with opinion polls showing that socialist prime minister José Sócrates will struggle to hang on to power, the rolling back of leftwing politics that has already taken place in northern Europe now appears to have moved south. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogZapatero’s socialists defeated by People’s party in regional electionsRelated posts:Blair to go, now give back the Labour PartyCatalan independence boost after Barcelona voteZapatero says Spain safe from bailout

May 23 2011, 12:35pm | Comments »

I posted to distributedresearch.net

Spain reveals pain over cuts and unemployment

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/05/21/spain-reveals-pain-over-cuts-and-unemployment

Spain protests: Young protesters in Madrid and beyond have many different demands, but they are united in opposing the Spanish governmentThis article titled “Spain reveals pain over cuts and unemployment” was written by Giles Tremlett in Madrid, for guardian.co.uk on Saturday 21st May 2011 11.59 UTCThe arrival of the table, a battered piece of formica bashed on top of four rough, oversized legs raised a cry of joy. Never mind that anyone on a normal chair would barely be able to see over the top – here was another small triumph of the new Spanish revolution, the gathering of angry Spaniards of all colours, ages and persuasions that is sweeping across the country and beyond its borders.The table that arrived in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square was part of the swirl of creative chaos, naive enthusiasm and pent-up frustration that has transformed it into a makeshift camp for thousand of protesters who call themselves los indignados, the indignant ones.Tents and mattresses, armchairs and sofas, a canteen, portaloos and solar panels have sprung up in a remarkable display of organisational prowess. And the mass of people jostling around, each pursuing their own dream or demand, or just watching others doing the same, seemed more like something transported from the Arab spring in North Africa than from Europe.As the protests continued to swell on Friday, with 60,000 people defying authorities to obey the campaign’s “Take over the square!” slogan in dozens of Spanish cities, and with copycat demonstrations across Europe, the question was whether this was the new May 1968 – a youth-led popular revolt against an establishment deemed to have failed an entire generation.Esther Gutierréz, an elfin 26-year-old, wandered through the crowd with a battered shopping cart full of fruit.“We’ve got so much food we don’t know what to do with it. People just bring it to us for free and it’s wonderful stuff,” she said. “We want real democracy. Not just freedom for bankers. You’re not from the Spanish press, are you? We don’t speak to them.”Cynical and ingenuous by turns, the Madrid protesters and those who last week refused to obey orders to budge from the occupied city squares have torn up the rule book of Spanish public politics. The heavyweights of old – political parties, trade unions and media commentators – are not wanted here.“I was sacked when the Madrid regional government closed down a women’s centre last year when it imposed cuts,” explained Beatriz García as she bashed a small frying pan with a wooden spoon. “The unions didn’t even bother to turn up.”The political parties were worse, she said. “There is no renovation. There is nothing new or different, just two parties who take it in turn to govern because our electoral laws favour them.”Just a week ago Spain was known for the passivity of its citizens as they put up with one of the most depressing eras in recent history. Despite unemployment hitting 21%, widespread spending cuts and a socialist government bound to obey the diktats of Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the financial markets, they had refused to show their pain. Marches, sit-ins or riots were for the French – or British students. The real drama, anyway, was in North Africa. Spaniards stayed at home.All that changed this week as demonstrations organised via Facebook and Twitter became static protests in city squares, mushrooming into something that caught politicians, unions and the media by surprise.While journalists were following the dull routine of campaigning for Sunday’s municipal and regional elections, the steam was beginning to escape from a pressure cooker of discontent.Many Spaniards had told pollsters they were tired of the same, well-known political faces – especially those who are due to be re-elected despite being mired in corruption scandals. Politicians have rarely been held in such disregard, with the prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, and opposition leader, Mariano Rajoy, of the conservative People’s party, rating lowest. Rajoy seems set to take over after a general election next March.When police forcibly evicted the Madrid demonstrators on Tuesday morning, they came back in even greater numbers later that day. By Friday night authorities had lost the battle to impose rules banning public politics on the day before elections. Police could only look on. “Join us, police officers!” the demonstrators shouted.By the early hours of Friday, it was already elbow-room only in the Puerta del Sol – the square which prides itself on being Spain’s “kilometre zero”, the spot from which all other distances are measured.On the statue of King Carlos III, somebody had pinned a sign that read: “We are anti-idiots, not anti-politicians.” Other placards read: “We aren’t against the system, we want to change it”, “Democracy, a daily fight”, and “Take your money out of the bank!”“We’ve brought tents, food and even Trivial Pursuit to keep us entertained,” said Pablo Cantó, a fresh-faced 23-year-old journalism student. Like many younger protesters, and the movement as a whole, he had trouble expressing exactly why he was here. “We want change,” he said. “Things just can’t carry on as they are.”The heavy clouds of cannabis smoke suggested others had brought their own form of entertainment.“I’ve been protesting for decades,” said 60-year-old school teacher Rosa Marín. “I’m glad to see so many young people here. The questions is this: Is this another May 1968, or are they just here for the party?”A gang of drunken skinheads, mindlessly chanting football terrace slogans, were there for the latter.But a neat, disciplined circle of people intently debating social reform showed many were here in earnest. They took turns to stand up and make their proposals, the audience listening and using the sign language applause of the deaf – by shaking their hands above their heads – to show approval without drowning the speakers out.The proposals, due to make their way through a laborious process of committees, working parties and general assemblies, varied from calls for less spending on the military to helping businesses. “Because it is not just money for the owners. They are the ones who give people like us jobs,” said one young man.For some younger protesters, it was a political baptism. “I don’t know what will come out of this, but it is enough just to show everyone how upset we are,” explained Javier de Coca by phone from the protest camp in Barcelona’s Plaza de Catalunya, where there was a surprising absence of the nationalist or separatist symbols of protest movements in recent years.“It’s as if they’ve realised they have more serious problems to deal with,” said one protester. One of those problems is 45% youth unemployment.On a wall beside the tarpaulin-covered command centre in what some were calling Madrid’s “Republic of Sol” – home to a press office, an infirmary and a legal centre – a list of needs had been pinned up. Toilet paper and food were scratched off the list. Bookshelves, wood, rubber gloves and bottles of cooking gas were on it. Volunteers were needed for a creche.“We process the proposals and try to turn them into something that makes legal sense,” explained a volunteer at the legal centre.However, the open assemblies are painfully slow. Some last for hours, as everybody is given their turn to speak. After almost a week of protests, the demonstrators have failed to come up with a coherent set of demands.Electoral reform to end the two-party system and action to both punish corrupt politicians and limit their luxuries and privileges were the main areas of agreement.So is the Arab spring spreading to southern Europe? “You can’t really compare us to people who were risking their lives by protesting,” said 23-year-old computer engineer Jaime Viyuela. “But yes, you can say that we are inspired by the courage of the Arab spring.” guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogSpain reveals pain over cuts and unemploymentRelated posts:Zapatero says Spain safe from bailoutProtest march against coalition cuts expected to attract 300,000Anti-cuts campaigners plan to turn Trafalgar Square into Tahrir Square

May 21 2011, 8:54am | Comments »

I posted to distributedresearch.net

Mervyn King: rebalance global economy or risk a trade war

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/15/mervyn-king-rebalance-global-economy-or-risk-a-trade-war

Funny the way nobody seems to ever listen to the governor of The Bank of England.

This article titled “Mervyn King: rebalance global economy or risk a trade war” was written by Larry Elliott, economics editor, for The Guardian on Monday 14th March 2011 07.05 UTC Mervyn King will be able to see for himself the devastation wrought by the natural disaster in Japan when he gives a speech in Tokyo today* stressing the need to rebalance the global economy and to head off protectionist pressures. Like the rest of us, the governor of the Bank of England could be forgiven for thinking that the gods continue to punish us mortals for the greed and stupidity of the bubble years. The first obstacle thrown in the way of recovery from the Great Recession was the ruinous cost of the crisis to sovereign states. Then, violent political unrest rippled across the world’s most significant oil-producing region, sending the cost of crude rocketing. Now, Japan has been laid low by one of the biggest earthquakes of the past 100 years at a time when its public finances are in a parlous state. In a sense, the obstacle-strewn road to redemption should come as no surprise. This was no ordinary crisis and it is proving to be no ordinary recovery. The debts that caused the global system to self-destruct back in the summer of 2007 have not gone away, they have merely been passed on to the public sector. This was always a solvency crisis, because it was clear four years ago that many banks were bust and would have gone under without the aid of governments. It is still a solvency crisis, because some countries – Greece, Ireland and soon perhaps Portugal – are struggling with the enormous cost of paying off their debts. But it is not just the small fry who are financially impaired. Japan already has a debt-to-GDP ratio of getting on for 200%, while the US national debt is now in excess of $13tn (£8tn), up from $1tn 30 years ago. This, of course, is before anything like the full impact of the ageing of the baby boomer generation has been felt. Here, then, are some predictions. Contrary to the knee-jerk reaction in the oil market on Friday, the earthquake and tsunami in Japan will be positive for growth, at least given the somewhat bizarre way statisticians calculate gross domestic product. There will be a massive reconstruction effort in Japan, which will be funded by a mixture of quantitative and fiscal easing. The rest of Asia will continue to expand briskly, leading to higher demand for oil. Crude prices will continue to rise, with Brent hitting $130 a barrel in the spring if speculation about turmoil spreading from Libya to Saudi Arabia continues. City analysts who travel to Asia and Latin America return with tales of how the emerging world is booming. It is certainly true that the big developing economies have been crucial to the recovery of the global economy since the spring of 2009. But the warning signs, flashing amber a few months ago, are now flashing red. Commodity prices, especially oil, were on a sharp upward trend before the unrest began in north Africa. Higher oil prices mean higher inflation, which in the four previous oil shocks has tended to mean higher interest rates. The European Central Bank will be the first to move, having signalled that it feels the time is right to start unwinding the ultra-expansionary policy stance of the past two years. In the UK, there will be intense pressure on the Bank of England to follow suit, not least because the ECB’s action will result in a weaker pound, making imported goods more expensive. Dearer borrowing will be a double whammy for the weak countries on the fringes of the eurozone. It will slow their growth and make the cost of paying their ruinous debts more expensive. Europe provided itself with some additional firepower to tackle a sovereign debt crisis late last week, but this will deliver only short-term relief from a problem that will eventually ensnare Spain and Belgium as well as Greece, Ireland and Portugal. The position of these developed countries is little different from that of poor countries in the 1990s: they are burdened with excessively high debts. Yet there is no Jubilee 2000 for Greece, and nor is there a bankruptcy mechanism for sovereign states. It is infra dig to suggest that bankers and bondholders should “take a haircut” for their duff decisions, and since they have declined, ordinary taxpayers will have to do so. The fundamental problem for countries such as Greece, Ireland and Portugal is that they need growth to pay off their enormous debts, yet are unable to do so because of the deflationary policies inflicted on them by the European Union and the IMF. The widening of bond spreads suggests that something is going to give sooner or later. This can either be in an orderly manner if policymakers get their act together or in a chaotic fashion if there are attempts to get through the crisis with a mixture of bluster and confusion. The debt crisis, tighter borrowing conditions and the squeeze on incomes and profits caused by higher energy costs will mean that global activity will start to cool over the coming months. Indeed, we could be quite close to the point where the main cause for concern ceases to be inflation and becomes growth. Interest rates will rise but not by nearly as much as the markets expect. In the UK, inflation will hit 5%, intensifying the policy debate at the Bank of England. If the Bank does act, a combination of tighter monetary policy and fiscal austerity will push the economy back into recession. Watch out for the second quarter of 2011: it is not going to be pleasant. Elsewhere, a deep and long recession will be followed by an unusually weak and shallow upturn, particularly given the size of the stimulus provided by central banks and finance ministries. The realisation that there will be no easy return to pre-2007 business as usual will trigger a wave of bankruptcies among firms that have been kept on life support in expectation of better times. Banks will have to own up to some of their hidden losses, resulting in a second phase of the financial crisis. This will be a bitter-sweet outcome for people like King, who have been warning that there will be no permanent solution to the crisis without addressing the global imbalances and to rein in the activities of big finance. Who knows, if things get really bad, his warnings may be acted upon? * The text of the speech was released ahead of Mervyn King’s visit, which was cancelled in the light of the earthquake.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogMervyn King: rebalance global economy or risk a trade war

Related posts:Oil price surge risking global recovery, says IEA chief Bank of England governor blames spending cuts on bank bailouts Cost of insuring Japanese government debt jumps

March 15 2011, 6:25am | Comments »

I posted to distributedresearch.net

Bank of England governor blames spending cuts on bank bailouts

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/05/bank-of-england-governor-blames-spending-cuts-on-bank-bailouts

A few days old now but some are wondering why no one is making more of this.

This article titled “Bank of England governor blames spending cuts on bank bailouts” was written by Phillip Inman, for The Guardian on Tuesday 1st March 2011 21.25 UTC Mervyn King has risked reopening the bitter argument over blame for the financial crisis by saying that government spending cuts are the fault of the City and expressing surprise there has not been more public anger. The governor of the Bank of England said that people made unemployed and businesses bankrupted during the crisis had every reason to be resentful and voice their protest. He told the Treasury select committee that the billions spent bailing out the banks and the need for public spending cuts were the fault of the financial services sector. “The price of this financial crisis is being borne by people who absolutely did not cause it,” he said. “Now is the period when the cost is being paid, I’m surprised that the degree of public anger has not been greater than it has.” King has repeatedly pointed the finger at the City since the crisis erupted in 2007, but this was the first time he blamed bankers for the coalition’s spending cuts. It became clear during the hearing that King and his fellow members of the Bank’s monetary policy committee, which sets interest rates, believe the crisis will have a lasting impact on the economy. Asked when living standards enjoyed before the crisis would return, King said: “The research makes it clear that the impact of these crises lasts for many years. It is not like an ordinary recession, where you lose output and get it back quickly. We may not get the lost output back for very many years, if ever.” King faced tough questions from Labour MPs who believe the Bank should not have supported the Treasury’s cuts programme. Accused by Andy Love, the Labour MP for Edmonton, of giving George Osborne cover for spending cuts, King denied that meetings with the chancellor resulted in a cosy agreement to keep interest rates low to support austerity measures. He said: “There has never been any attempt on any occasion to influence the monetary policy committee on what decisions it should take.” In a further provocation to the financial sector, King set out plans for an overhaul of City regulation and oversight that would allow banks to fail when they get into trouble. He told MPs it was necessary to move away from rules designed to prevent banks failing, with a safety net provided by taxpayers, to a system that allowed banks to fail in an orderly way.

Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogBank of England governor blames spending cuts on bank bailouts

Related posts:UK Uncut protesters target Barclays over tax avoidance Artist Anish Kapoor warns arts cuts are ‘rolling us back to the Thatcher years’ FE colleges hit by more cuts

March 4 2011, 6:03pm | Comments »

Andy Roberts

Zapatero’s socialists defeated by People’s party in regional elections

Spain reveals pain over cuts and unemployment

Mervyn King: rebalance global economy or risk a trade war

Bank of England governor blames spending cuts on bank bailouts

Learn about AndyRobertsBlog.co.uk

Visit Andy Roberts Music sites

Get Andy Roberts Sampler CD

Listen Right here Right Now:

Andy Roberts Photos

London Theatre Breaks

Browse via Popular Tags here

Search