Hostile and Notorious: The Conditions of Private Property | MARK PASCHAL - Viewpoint Magazine

Very good essay here on the conditions around private property and how this relates to the occupy movement, specifically the recent occupations of buildings in the US. Of course, although the particular history of US property law maybe be slightly different to what is on the statute book here the fundamental points are exactly the same.

In the Irish context however, the lines are even less clear when it comes to the occupation of NAMA property. It is perfectly reasonable in the context of NAMA to ask: are these private or public properties? Who actually owns the titles to the buildings? Do property titles exist? What rights do ordinary working people have to use those building for a social good given that the money NAMA is using to ‘bailout’ developers comes from the Irish exchequer leading to the reduction of that money being used for various social services?

“There are no inalienable rights to own private property. Private property means different things in different countries and communities, and the limits and responsibilities of its use are constantly changing according to political pressure. It took statutory laws, the Preemption Act and Homestead Act, to make public lands private.

Claiming private spaces by a social movement is illegal within a legislative and juridical framework that equates the “public good” with gross domestic product. Notions of the “public good” in the United States have tended to rely on the perceived ability of commercial activity to make life better for for the majority. For this reason, blighted property can be seized by “public servants” and handed over to “private enterprise”; chambers of commerce have more importance in local politics than associations of community gardeners; and the stock market is the bearer of US economic wealth, rather than the number of unemployed or homeless. The last forty years, however, have demonstrated that all of these assumptions hide the reality of a class society. Arguments about what constitutes the “public good” in the United States have been increasingly revealed to be arguments about what is good for “job creators” - the wealthiest men, women and corporations in the world.

Against this ideology, the strategy of occupying dormant private property articulates the interests of the working class. Public-space occupations have presented themselves as the establishment of new forms of community, based on the mutual exchange of voluntary labor. But for the masses of people whose time is in short supply, whose days are entirely structured by work, it is clear that labor remains the fundamental element of a system of exploitation. By attacking private property itself, a strategy of illegal occupations - which nevertheless takes advantage of the gaps and openings of the existing laws - can move us past the “public good” to the foundations of working-class power.”

[The following paragraph is an extract from a comment by Gerard Murphy, made in a discussion on Cedar Lounge Revolution. It draws on research he did at UL. A paper from the UL journal 'Socheolas' is available (PDF) here.]

Gerard Murphy | Framing Propaganda: Print Media Coverage of Irish Public Service Workers

In addition the research pointed out that the Irish Independent (and probably other media too) overwhelmingly relied on Government, and employers (IBEC and ISME) sources when reporting on pay issues. “Analysis of the sources used by the Irish Independent indicate that apart from government sources, there was extensive use of sources from the employer organisations such as ISME and IBEC. In comparison only thirty two per cent of quoted sources came from trade union or worker supportive groups. In addition over half of the trade union sources when used were talking in the context of forecasted industrial action and only two of the eleven ‘expert opinion’ articles originated in the ‘anti-cuts’ sector. In essence very little coverage was given to alternative advice or plans that opposed the government policy. Indeed it would be fair to argue that the entire debate was conducted within the ‘There Is No Alternative’ framework, a viewpoint that concurred with the stated opinion of the major employer groups”.

Germany Resists Europe’s Pleas to Spend More

Commanding austerity across your European market while recording the lowest unemployment for a generation with exports booming? Uuuuro, suits you sir.

“One of the lessons of the crisis,” Mr. Weidmann said, is that cutting budget deficits “should be postponed as little as possible.”

That view annoys many people outside Germany, who see it as another example of the country’s lecturing the rest of Europe while putting a priority on its domestic interests. Germany, with the lowest borrowing costs and strongest economy among the big European countries, should lend the rest of Europe a hand, they say.

“Germany is the only country that has this freedom, and if they don’t use this freedom, that is bad,” said Éric Chaney, chief economist at AXA Group, a French insurer.

Smell Ms Merkel’s Whip Hand in Glove with the Fiscal Sadists

The language of S&M is also now part of the eurozone discourse. The joint letter sent last month by Sarkozy and Angela Merkel to Herman van Rompuy, president of the European Council, explaining the Franco-German plans for future governance of the single currency stressed “fiscal discipline” and the need to “detect and correct departures from sound economic and fiscal policies long before they become a threat to the stability of the euro area as a whole”.

There’s plenty of raw material here, given a tweak or two, for a modern version of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs. “Mario, you have allowed the Italian budget deficit to rise above 3% of gross domestic product.” “Yes, mistress Angela, I deserve to be punished for my lack of fiscal discipline. Please do not spare me.”

Spain is perhaps the best current example of the predilection for pain. The new conservative government of Mariano Rajoy has inherited a budget deficit running at 8.7% of GDP in the first nine months of 2011 and has set a target of reducing it to 4.4% of GDP in 2012 and 3% in 2013.

The eurozone will pay a high price for Germany’s economic narcissism

Hans Kundnani in the Guardian on the German minimalist approach to the euro crisis as informed by  ordoliberalism, which is…

“…a peculiarly German form of economic liberalism influenced by Adam Smith but also by 20th-century German history. Developed in the 1930s and 1940s by Walter Eucken and the Freiburg School, ordoliberalism is based on the idea that the role of the state is to create an economic and legal framework to enable the market to work efficiently - above all through the maintenance of price stability.

The ordoliberals (sometimes called neoliberals) had in mind both the failure of the Weimar Republic on the one hand and Nazism (to which Eucken was opposed) and communism on the other. Thus while they believed in greater state interference in the market than classical Anglo-Saxon liberals (in particular to prevent the emergence of monopolies and oligopolies), they believed in less interference than Keynesians. For example, ordoliberals staunchly oppose expansionary fiscal and monetary policy during an economic downturn.

Although ordoliberalism is little known elsewhere, it is hugely influential in Germany, particularly on the centre-right.... Read article » To them, the role of a central bank is above all to maintain price stability - and thus promote growth only indirectly.

[...]

As a result, few mainstream German economists accept the idea that Germany’s surpluses - themselves, in part, the result of the euro - are the flipside of other countries’ deficits and therefore part of the problem. Instead, they see surpluses simply as the product of good economic management.”

Emigration and education appear to be behind a fall in unemployment in the Republic.

The numbers signing on have dipped by 2,295 in the year to 434,784, with a marked 8% drop in youth unemployment, new Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures reveal.

However the Irish Government was accused of a “hopeless and harmful” reliance on emigration instead of real policies to tackle joblessness.

Although unemployment rose marginally amongst people aged over 25, it fell by 8.5% amongst those aged under 25 during 2011.

Unemployment also fell faster amongst men and in the west of the country, which is believed to be worse hit by emigration.

Time to Stop Being Cynical About Corporate Money in Politics and Start Being Angry Buying Congress in 2012 |  Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben’s resolution for 2012 is to be naïve — dangerously naïve.

I’m aware that the usual recipe for political effectiveness is just the opposite: to be cynical, calculating, an insider. But if you think, as I do, that we need deep change in this country, then cynicism is a sucker’s bet. Try as hard as you can, you’re never going to be as cynical as the corporations and the harem of politicians they pay for.  It’s like trying to outchant a Buddhist monastery.

….

Far from showing any shame, the big players boast about it: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, front outfit for a consortium of corporations, has bragged on its website about outspending everyone in Washington, which is easy to do when Chevron, Goldman Sachs, and News Corp are writing you seven-figure checks. This really matters.  The Chamber of Commerce spent more money on the 2010 elections than the Republican and Democratic National Committees combined, and 94% of those dollars went to climate-change deniers.  That helps explain why the House voted last year to say that global warming isn’t real.

It also explains why “our” representatives vote, year in and year out, for billions of dollars worth of subsidies for fossil-fuel companies. If there was ever an industry that didn’t need subsidies, it would be this one: they make more money each year than any enterprise in the history of money. Not only that, but we’ve known how to burn coal for 300 years and oil for 200.

Those subsidies are simply payoffs. Companies give small gifts to legislators, and in return get large ones back, and we’re the ones who are actually paying.

Cork Solidarity | Video of the Occupation of NAMA building and Vita Cortex workers talk to Trade Union TV

NAMA building liberation on Christmas morning in Cork

More here.

Solidarity with Vita Cortex workers in Cork from Paula at Trade Union TV

The Miracle of Solvency | Golem XIV - David Malone

David Malone looks at the end of the year auditing reconciliations in the Banking sector and notices that auditors are very forgiving of lies - here’s the Irish angle, as once again, Irish banks are no angels.

“And what of the Risk Officers and Risk and Audit Committees of the banks themselves? This is after all where the ritual of Reconciliation mostly takes place. Can we look to them for honesty and integrity? Let me put it this way. Bank of Ireland (not to be confused with the Central Bank of Ireland), just appointed (on December 23rd) a certain Mr Patrick Mulvihill to its Board as a non-executive Director AND to its Audit Committee and Risk Committee. Mr Mulvihill spent much of his career at Goldman Sachs where he was on the board of GS Europe and on their Audit Committee. Make of that what you wish. One thing’s for sure, he will be perfectly suited for the job he’ll be expected to do.

He, like all those working for and around him, will decide if the sovereign bonds of Italy and Spain, for example, are to be booked as risk free AAA rated sovereign Euro bonds, or risky bonds which the market won’t touch for much less than 7%. Sovereign bonds are considered virtually risk free in the part of the bank which considers which assets count as solid capital to underpin liabilities. But are traded as risky and therefore lucrative in another. Will the banks book the profit of the risky version but asses the risk weighting from the risk free version? It’s like Quantum mechanics for liars. You get to have it be a wave or a particle depending on which suits you at a given moment.Which will it be? Are sovereign bonds risk free or lucratively risky?

And what about mark to market valuations? Will the Risk Committees and Audit Committees give a clear valuation of the banks assets? Or will they do what they did earlier this year, and move any ‘risky’ assets, that they have valued at ‘mark to model’ fantasy prices and which would surely lose a lot of ‘value’ if ever they were marked to market -  move them from the ‘Available to Trade’ column where market to market is required, over to the ‘Hold to Maturity’ column where mark to model is fine? What do you think? Will they go for honesty and transparency or press a few keys and move billions from one column to another? And remember the assets hidden from view like this won’t be ‘held to maturity’ if the bank gets in trouble.  At that point the bank will move them back again and sell them and the accounting fiction will become clear for what it is - a lie.”

“Demands” by Chris Dillow at Stumbling and Mumbling

James Bloodworth’s post, entitled “some basic demands the left must start to make” raises a longstanding peeve of mine.

This is that the use of the word “demand” — which has long been common on the left and among trades unions — is a terrible rhetorical strategy. People who make demands are tiresome — demanding! — and unreasonable. The very use of the word is therefore a turn-off.

The rest of the article is here.