Two weeks ago, European heads of state and the International Monetary Fund reached agreement on a €750 billion rescue package for the euro. Since then, not a day has gone by without the announcement of a new round of draconian austerity measures.
**Summary**
- Greece: wage and pension cuts, slashing social programmes and an increase in VAT
- Spain: €80 billion in cuts, 13,000 public sector jobs cut, 5% pay cut for state employees, pensions frozen, new child payment ended
- Italy: 24 billion in cuts, cuts in civil service jobs, pay, increased retirement age, health care cuts
- France: 10% administrative cuts, raise in retirement age, housing benefits cut, UE cut, museums cut
- Germany: 60 billion in cuts under discussion for june 6-7.
***end summary***
A study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank in the US concludes that “the welfare states set up across Europe from the 1940s onwards with the aim of "suppressing popular unrest and paying off tensions that could lead to another continental war” are “unaffordable”.
But there is no shortage of money. The budget shortfalls that are being used to justify the dismantling of the welfare state are the result of the systematic redistribution of income and wealth from those at the bottom of society to those at the top....The trillions that governments pumped into the banks in 2008 and 2009 to prevent their collapse meant the public debt rose sharply. Recently published figures from the German Bundesbank prove this. In 2008 and 2009, some 53 percent of Germany’s new debt was a result of measures taken to rescue various financial institutions. The total new debt rose in these two years by €183 billion; the costs involved in supporting the financial institutions amounted to €98 billion.
Now the banks are exploiting the crisis they created to escalate their plundering of the working class. The governments and the EU act as their accomplices. This became clear last Friday, when in expedited proceedings the German parliament issued a blank cheque worth €148 billion...the Bundestag approved the fast-track loan guarantees amounting to half the federal budget, without even being clear to whom and under what conditions the money would flow.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/may2010/pers-m29.shtml