BF2S Forums Presidential Election 2016

uziq wrote:

jay talking about the EU is a bit like me talking about the conditions of covid sufferers in the bronx. at least i don't think the stairwells are full of drug-dealers listening to jay-z and pushing crack. seems all he has to offer is some vague generalisation about bureaucracy.

Have you ever been in a NYCHA building?

Dilbert_X wrote:

Whoever is currently running the EU, what persuasion do we call them?

it's pretty hard to characterise the EU as anything but neoliberal after 2008. the top priorities of the organization are preserving the economy, fiscal policy, and austerity/quantitative easing. it's an organization there to service the powerful northern banks. a 'neo-socialist' organization wouldn't do what the EU did in greece, italy and spain. real, autochthonous left-wing movements there were squashed like bugs and brought into line with the EU orthodoxy.

the EU's response to the economic crash was basically the same as the democrats' in the US: totally absolve all those responsible, rap a few bosses on the knuckles, and then tell the rest of the populace to pull up their bootstraps and deal with it. an opportunity for serious review and reform? ha!

an organization that forces working-people across the continent to accept massive austerity? huge cuts to public services? liberalization of markets? privatization of public utilities and services? all in the name of paying off a banking crisis? not very socialist, let alone deserving of a trendy 'neo-' prefix. recall how much ire larssen reserves for the humble greek olive farmer and their part in the economic crash. solidarity with the comrades!

if the EU did use its clout and resources for left-wing and redistributive ends, i wouldn't have a problem with it. neither, evidently, would the french people, who are protesting en masse about macron's banker-lite governance, e.g. the usual sallies of tax cuts for the rich and corporations, increased taxes on working people.

all of which are tinder fuel for a revived populist right-wing, too. the energies can just as easily be diverted that way.

of course, you can anticipate larssen's response, as it's a favourite ploy of everyone of their 'right-thinking' persuasion to claim they are post-ideology, beyond politics, not involved in petty partisan issues, etc. everything is 'pragmatic', without paying any attention to the drastically reduced field of possibilities considered, of course. these germans, they're just so reasonable! it's the rest of the world who are losing their mind, crazy lefties and right-wing thugs included, the pious centrists are beyond reproach!

Last edited by uziq (2020-05-20 03:17:18)

lmao ok. you clearly know what you're talking about and aren't at all getting your information on the EU drip-fed from some concert singing bait-nubile on the national review.

no, you're right, it's not as simple as one label. these things seldom are.

the EU was a social-democratic, vaguely left project in its inception. lofty, idealistic, a brotherhood made out of fractious nations. i think its monetary policy might have dragged it way out to the right. they are adopting a testudo formation now over the fiscal union, to stop the roof from caving in on all of their own heads. the working-people are grist for the mill. it's 'too big to fail'!!! the problem is they aren't even doing anything to address the imbalances with the south. it's quite literally astonishing that the rich, northern states stood by and watched italy get wiped out by 2 months of covid-19, with no financial or medical aid sent whatsoever. meanwhile lagarde et al were making rumblings about the inevitable bail-out the broke italians would require. where is the bonhomie? the spirit of cooperation?

it seems several of the northern rich nations are no longer in step with the germans and french, or more properly the german banks, who are running the show. even they are tired of this cycle of rescuing the southern states with more bonds and loans and kicking the problem into the long grass. there's something perverse in the EUs economic logic, with its strict austerity followed by floods of quantitative easing. tap on, tap off. no support given to struggling states to avert disaster, huge bail-outs after they've crashed and burned. what gives?

it's an additional irony that anti-EU sentiment is playing into far-right populists who are, really, more neoliberal than the brussels technocrats. the brexiteers have effectively sold to a frustrated and broke british populace the idea that more neoliberalism, greater relaxation, more free trade, not less, will fix their problems. after a decade of austerity in the name of fiscal prudence. you can't make it up.

Last edited by uziq (2020-05-20 03:28:38)

uziq wrote:

it seems several of the northern rich nations are no longer in step with the germans and french, or more properly the german banks, who are running the show. even they are tired of this cycle of rescuing the southern states with more bonds and loans and kicking the problem into the long grass. there's something perverse in the EUs economic logic, with its strict austerity followed by floods of quantitative easing. tap on, tap off. no support given to struggling states to avert disaster, huge bail-outs after they've crashed and burned. what gives?

It could be as simple as a mechanism to help Goldman-Sachs make money.

Or the EU technocrats want to play heros, and you can't be a hero if there's no disaster to rescue people from - firefighters often being the most likely arsonists.

Dilbert_X wrote:

uziq wrote:

it seems several of the northern rich nations are no longer in step with the germans and french, or more properly the german banks, who are running the show. even they are tired of this cycle of rescuing the southern states with more bonds and loans and kicking the problem into the long grass. there's something perverse in the EUs economic logic, with its strict austerity followed by floods of quantitative easing. tap on, tap off. no support given to struggling states to avert disaster, huge bail-outs after they've crashed and burned. what gives?

It could be as simple as a mechanism to help Goldman-Sachs make money.

Or the EU technocrats want to play heros, and you can't be a hero if there's no disaster to rescue people from - firefighters often being the most likely arsonists.

GS is an american bank. german and french banks have made billions in interests profit from greek loans. look up the KfW development bank.

uziq wrote:

GS is an american bank. german and french banks have made billions in interests profit from greek loans. look up the KfW development bank.

I think you'll find GS has involvement in getting those loans written in the first place.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl … 81926.html

Mysterious no?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ … -sachs-job

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-05-20 03:53:29)

I'm not saying its a meaningful presence, just its an illustration of where these various strands of socialism have drifted to from their roots.
Because flat hats and jobs for bricklayers don't really seem to figure these days.

But anyway, we still don't seem to have figured out what ideology the EU has. It will always be a mystery.

The internal economic decision making has had a certain neoliberal character to it but it would be a misnomer to characterise the entire EU as a neoliberal project. Much of what it does is counter to deregulation, privatisation and free markets, to say nothing about foreign policy.

Last edited by Larssen (2020-05-20 04:19:21)

i would agree with that. however the single biggest factor in our politics since 2008 has been the EU's response to the crisis, which frankly can only be characterised as a disastrous mis-step. first austerity, then quantitative easing, then more QE ... flip-flop, flip-flop. and who gained? lots of development banks making hundreds of billions of dollars, and the main population of EU impoverished, stripped of public services, faced with stagnant wages, etc.

the neoliberal fiscal policy has had a far greater effect on the everyday 'lived experience' of life in the EU than decades of cooperation and national goodwill. that's a reckoning you have to face.

neoliberals =/= liberals. it is more conservative than anything else. why are we always doing first principles on this board?

true neoliberals would not even have agreed to the bailout packages for other governments in the first place so I'd say the thesis is kinda weak.

except they weren't agreed as bailouts for governments, really, were they? hmm i wonder what other bodies the EC were concerned about when agreeing huge fiscal stimulus?

Last edited by uziq (2020-05-20 04:37:28)

Larssen wrote:

In the EP the liberal faction includes the biggest proponents of neoliberal fiscal policies... the continental conservatives often argue against privatisation etc...

I know it's complicated but it's you who always ends up steering the discussion into definitions. A true academic - I suspect every one of your articles was prefaced by at least 2 pages on definitions.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10. … ode=rsor20

and ... no. you, the policy-wonk who loves acronyms and exotic ancient greek loan words to add an air of intellectualism to your piffling paper-shuffling, accusing me of laboured writing? LMAO.

uziq wrote:

and ... no. you, the policy-wonk who loves acronyms and exotic ancient greek loan words to add an air of intellectualism to your piffling paper-shuffling, accusing me of laboured writing? LMAO.

Correctly using a well-known term in historiography = 'using exotic ancient greek loan words to add an air of intellectualism to your paper shuffling'

Every day the irony is stronger with you. You accusing someone else of using 'exotic language' to obscure their writing. I believe pretty much everyone who's posted here has a thing or two to say on that.