"G7 Central Banks printed $9000 billion on behalf of Big Finance but skimped on $39 billion that would have vaccinated Humanity"

 

DiEM25's Yanis Varoufakis speaks on "vaccine internationalism" as an alternative...

Video: "ADULTS IN THE ROOM" (Trailer of Costa-Gavras' film of Yanis Varoufakis' book)

"Behind closed doors, a human tragedy plays out.

A universal theme: a story of people trapped in an inhuman network of power.

The brutal circle of the Eurogroup meetings, who impose on Greece the dictatorship of austerity, where humanity and compassion are utterly disregarded.

A claustrophobic trap with no way out, exerting pressures on the protagonists which finally divide them. A tragedy in the Ancient Greek sense: the characters are not good or evil, but driven by the consequences of their own conception of what it is right to do.

A tragedy for our very modern time."

WATCH the trailer here.

"InfoBarcelona: New labour advice services for citizens, organisations and businesses"

"In response to the current Covid-19 crisis, a freephone number has been set up to handle labour queries from citizens and a new Barcelona Activa portal opened up to facilitate financial support and resources to help workers, organisations and self-employed professionals in the business sector. 

In addition, Barcelona Activa will not be charging rent to any companies housed in its business incubators while the state of emergency is in place.

New freephone number for citizens

The new service offers personalised phone support and is aimed at anyone with doubts and queries which Barcelona Activa may be able to resolve. The freephone number (900 533 175) will be operational from Monday to Friday, from 9 am to 6 pm. Depending on the nature of each enquiry, they will be referred to specialist services and resources.

Points to protect labour rights

While the state of emergency is in place, face-to-face support provided at labour rights protection points at the three district offices has been suspended. The service is being provided by phone and online instead and is available citywide.

• Three phone numbers have been set up: 932 346 122, 932 346 121 and 932 346 120.
• Any of the three district offices can be contacted by email. Check the email addresses and service times here.

Website with information on financial resources

Barcelona Activa has set up a new information portal on financial resources and support provided by all administrations, aimed especially at micro companies, SMEs, the self-employed and workers, who have borne the brunt of the drop in turnover since the state of emergency was declared. The website also provides services for businesses, cooperatives, organisations and associations who request it.

Subsidies for projects from the cooperative, social and solidarity economy

Organisations also have access to an online advice service to present projects from the cooperative, social and solidarity economy for open subsidy calls. The goal of this service is to resolve queries relating to documents for calls from the programmes ‘Impulsem el que fas’ and ‘Enfortim l’ESS 2020’.

Read more from source at barcelona.cat  here.

"The EU's Green New Deal is a colossal exercise in Greenwashing"

Yanis Varoufakis, leader of DiEM25 (Democracy in Europe Movement 2025) and progressive left member of the Greek parliament argues in The Guardian newspaper that a major mistake is being made...

"Ursula von der Leyen’s signature proposal co-opts the slogans of climate activism, but has none of the substance.

Emergencies tend to reveal our true priorities. When our house is burning down or the storm waters are flooding in, we hold on to what we value most, and leave the rest behind.

A decade ago, the leaders of the European Union found themselves facing such a moment. With the French and German banks falling into a black hole, they did whatever it took to save them. Between 2009 and 2013, European governments channelled €1.6tn (£1.36tn) to Europe’s bankers, while imposing stringent austerity upon the European citizens they pledged to serve. When in 2015 they realised that more support was necessary, the European Central Bank printed €2.6tn over just four years.

Now, Europe confronts a crisis of far greater severity: a climate emergency. And so, last month, EU commission president Ursula von der Leyen unveiled the European green deal, a €1tn, 10-year plan to reduce the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% compared with 1990. “This is Europe’s man on the moon moment,” said Von der Leyen.

At first, one cannot resist comparing the two sums and the priorities they reveal: more than €4.2tn to save Europe’s financial sector; €1tn to save our world."

Read more from source here.

(4 min. video:) "How did Portugal recover from the financial crisis?" -- Lessons for Spain and Europe.

Catalans fight libel fine with YouTube videos

"When Catalan magazine editors Marta Sibina and Albano Dante created a YouTube video to publicly shame Catalan health-care adviser, they were fined 10,000 euro for defamation.
Not to be shouted down by Spain’s libel laws, the two responded by creating yet another video explaining why they were in the right.

In the original video, called the “Greatest Theft in the History of Catalonia,” the pair decried what they see as “a lack of transparency in Catalonia’s public health-care system” and the apparent mismanagement of taxpayer dollars.

After being fined for libel Oct. 23, they published a follow-up video in which Sibina and Dante say an independent audit confirmed their claims and found “enormous chaos” in the region’s hospitals, including 209,000 euro in clandestine payments to a local member of parliament."

Read more here.

"The Pain in Spain"

[Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images]

Back from a month-long visit to a former homeland [Australia] it seems to me that Spain has only just survived further economic bailouts...

A simple and unflinching account of exactly why this country got into so much financial trouble can be found at a new, impressive non-profit website called The Global Mail, which is employing some of down-under’s most experienced journalists.

Their European correspondent Eric Ellis, has also examined the “potentially explosive conditions in south-eastern Spain, where illegal African immigrants slave for a pittance in Europe’s salad bowl.

Mini-jobs for mini-pay

The faceless, unelected of the European Central Bank (ECB) have told the new Prime Minister-elect Mariano Rajoy what to do and he will happily do as they say.

The ECB wants wage cuts and the creation of "mini-jobs" to address the issue of youth unemployment in exchange for buying Spanish government bonds. These "mini-jobs" would pay salaries below the minimum wage, which in Spain is 541 euros a month.

Rajoy told union leaders that he would also use the letter from the ECB as a road map for policies aimed at ensuring that Spain remains in the vanguard of the euro zone.

Just the latest step in turning the Euro zone into a low-wage zone.

Money for something

Faced with new, tougher European stress tests and international concerns over their exposure to the property bust, Spain’s savings banks, or cajas, are very likely to soon be partially nationalised.

A very good idea to get what is actually public money back in public hands, but the decision to do this would only be a fair one if Spain’s larger commercial banks were also dealt with in the same way.

Coming to a town near you! Some of the world’s most powerful people…

There were some particularly “special visitors” to the beach town of Sitges (where I work part-time) earlier this month.

As usual, the elite Bilderberg group went to extreme lengths to avoid any publicity and equally extreme lengths to make sure that the agreements made in these meetings remained secret.

What would be worse? If high powered decision makers did get together to make high powered decisions, or if they didn’t meet at all?

It’s not difficult to conclude that the world financial crisis would be even worse is if there had not been some kind of international co-ordination behind it.

But how is it that these public figures can get away without any explanation of the results of these discussions? It took the publication of a guest list in an article by Victor González in the leftist Extremadura Progresista to alert world media to the existence of this year’s annual event.

If there is any truth to the suggestion that the Bildberbergers are not just a think tank, and that they in fact exist to ensure that the rich and powerful stay rich and powerful due to the labour of millions of poorer working folk, then we should know a lot more about this.

It is seems likely to me that the powerful do not just waste their time talking about ideas. These 7 Spaniards and 63 others would not give up their days to simply gasbag with each other (as the group has been doing every year since 1954) if there was not some exercising of heavy power that came from it.

An idea whose time has come

Finally, someone with (at least a bit of) power has spoken out with a logical proposal to make irresponsible greed in the finance world more difficult.

The EU internal market commissioner [and politician] Michel Barnier stated this week that to prevent future financial crises, there should be a network of national funds should be introduced so the cost of bank failures are not met by the taxpayer.

But as one commentator argues, the big problem with this (and similar) proposals is that it fails to tackle the problem of 'moral hazard', whereby banks take excessive risks, knowing that they have the protection of a safety-net. Indeed, by reducing the consequences of excessive risk-taking, these bail-out funds could have the opposite effect to that intended.

I believe there must first be a way to ensure that any new levies are not simply passed on to consumers in the form of higher fees or in-built secretive charges.

Similar measures have also been put forward to restrict European hedge funds and this is also a step in the right direction.