Free market and the effect of banks and immigration

[Basil II the B.S]

Immigration is part of the policies and one of the worst ones.

I'll give you the explanation: one of the things people (rightfully) protest about, especially trade unions, is outsourcing. Outsourcing became popular in the 80s, under Reagan and Thatcher, the era of free capital molibity. The intention was clear: trade unions are too powerful, so to curb their power, you use the threat of moving capital (thus the factory) elsewhere, where trade unions are weaker and so are worker's rights.
In the 90s they added immigration: if you can exploit workers in a third world country, then why not allow in millions of them, so that you can exploit them in the West? If you are the capitalist you don't even need to waste money to move to factory to, let's say China. Immigration is a huge bargain..... for the capital owner. If you don't own capital then you are worse off. If you are a salaried worker, immigration crashes you.

One side of the coin is outsourcing, the other side is mass migration. That coin is called lower wages. Lately I have been reading pre-1990 left wing material, I even found this:
https://twitter.com/kompagnoFolagra/...87934243786754

This is the French communist party in 1980: ''stop migration, legal or illegal''. They knew what it was all about.


And I'm not even advocating socialism. All I'm saying is, you can't be a leftist if you advocate policies that damage the working class. The left, today, has completely lost it on this topic.

Want further evidence? Even Jeremy Corbyn who's a last bastion of the dying old left in the UK called out mass migration of cheap labour destroying the working class:
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics...itions-british

Which of course resulted in the liberal left, the bourgeoise, upper class represented by The Guardian throwing a tantrum about Corbyn being a xenophobe:
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...rbyn-attitudes

and the usual shower of insults ''bigots and ignorants''. Because they are fine people when you pander to them, but if someone else panders to the working class and they listen to him, then they are biggits and ignorants.

The funny thing about that article is that it uses the usual empty argument against ''neoliberalism'' while at the same time supporting open borders and mass migration... a neoliberal policy. That's the state of the modern left.


------

edit: I can also explain why a bank like BBVA, just like most banks support immigration. If you look at the models of big business like global banks, they have debt sustainability scenarios. For the debt to be sustainabile, the business must keep growing. For the business to grow, they need new consumers. Now, if population in the West was growing, it'd be enough for the banks to have a sustainable business, but it's not growing at all, it's shrinking. Meaning banks can't rely on the natural population growth to sustain their business, so they have increase competition among themselves, or they push for immigration so that it adds new potential customers.

Where's the problem in this? Because, it makes the need for population growth lasting forever. Banks will always need more customers so that the business is sustainable. But it's not sustainable on a social level and, if you are truly worried about climate change, then it's not environmentally sustainable either. That's why the ''more people equals more GDP'' is a massively blind argument. Can earth keep going with 10 billion people so that banks can be sustainable? What about 20 billion? I'm not an expert on climate change, I actually avoid debating it, but one issue often brought to the table is population growth sustainability. Then the West doesn't need more people. The world doesn't need more people. The West is already shrinking on its own, East Asia has peaked. The problem is Africa.

Another problem: automation. Automation is going to kill hundreds of million of jobs, including those of bankers. No jobs, no income, so consumers won't buy anything. So what's the point of insisting on an economic model based on population growth when it's not technologically nor environmentally sustainable?

[Love Mountain]

Debt is sustainable in England with or without immigrants. Any state with a powerful central bank can keep printing money. So no, it's not about debt. It's about the clashing of liberal values and protectionist policies to maintain a standard of living the the population believes they are entitled to.

Any re-adjustment economic scenario will produce winners and losers, and an injection of several million people into the economy will certainly create a re-adjustment scenario. The growth of the population of England outstripped its economic growth. This is in part due to Austerity policies that conservative government. Even then, this mismatch is not remotely catastrophic as high developed economies are resilient to even severe financial shocks, so the fearmongering is ridiculous.

[Basil II the B.S]

Central banks are no longer state owned, specifically to avoid what you are advocating (which goes under the name ''Modern Monetary Theory'', a rather interesting framework, but not fully applicable to the current neoliberal world. It should be noted that the privatization of central banks is also a neoliberal beacon).

Also I was talking about private banks, not the state debt, it should be clear since I mentioned they want consumers; a central bank doesn't need consumers. Commercial banks can't print money on their own. They have to borrow from the central bank.

What you call resilience to financial shocks is in reality a gigantic transfer of wealth from the lower classes to the financial sector to keep it going (the bail out and quantitative easing) and the masses are rightfully pissed off. Should we have another financial shock in the near future, I want to see how many countries will be able to bail out the banking sector without facing political revolution. In the meanwhile, we get severe political upheaval which is not going away anytime soon, so I wouldn't really speak of resilience, they are barely standing.

[Love Mountain]

Central banks are no longer state owned, specifically to avoid what you are advocating (which goes under the name ''Modern Monetary Theory'', a rather interesting framework, but not fully applicable to the current neoliberal world. It should be noted that the privatization of central banks is also a neoliberal beacon).

The reality of the matter is that they will if they need to. That's the function of central banks. To maintain control of the money supply.

Also I was talking about private banks, not the state debt, it should be clear since I mentioned they want consumers; a central bank doesn't need consumers. Commercial banks can't print money on their own. They have to borrow from the central bank.

That's... irrelevant. State debt is the function of the treasury, not the central bank (in the US anyway). And even then, the central bank can indefinitely increase the money supply and thus, private debt, by buying up commercial assets. If things really get dicey, they can go ahead and buy literally anything. It's a scary power and thus why the heads of central banks are usually extremely careered economists.

What you call resilience to financial shocks is in reality a gigantic transfer of wealth from the lower classes to the financial sector to keep it going (the bail out and quantitative easing) and the masses are rightfully pissed off. Should we have another financial shock in the near future, I want to see how many countries will be able to bail out the banking sector without facing political revolution. In the meanwhile, we get severe political upheaval which is not going away anytime soon, so I wouldn't really speak of resilience, they are barely standing.

No, what I call resistance to financial shocks is persistent real GDP growth in the face of a huge recession. The economy re-oriented itself remarkably quickly despite lack of a real stimulus. Much credit to the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England of course, but still. This is the type of recession that outright crippled economies, several of them relatively well developed. That there are winners and losers in a recession is self-evident. Some players were exposed, others saw opportunity to buy depreciated assets. This type of scenario favors those with capital, naturally. Hardly conspiratorial however.

[Basil II the B.S]

The reality of the matter is that they will if they need to. That's the function of central banks. To maintain control of the money supply.


That's... irrelevant. State debt is the function of the treasury, not the central bank (in the US anyway). And even then, the central bank can indefinitely increase the money supply and thus, private debt, by buying up commercial assets. If things really get dicey, they can go ahead and buy literally anything. It's a scary power and thus why the heads of central banks are usually extremely careered economists.

It's not irrelevant, you are making a huge mess here. Central banks aren't supposed to prop up failing lending business indefinetely. The ECB is specifically forbidden by treaty to do that. Not to mention that the policy you are advocating, unlimited buying, can be done only as long as the currency is accepted, which is dangerous. The US can do it because its currency is internationally, universally accepted, for now. The pound, the yen, the yuan and the euro are also sort of universally accepted. Venezuela's currency however, for instance, is not, and that's why their endless printing is causing hyperinflation.

No, what I call resistance to financial shocks is persistent real GDP growth in the face of a huge recession. The economy re-oriented itself remarkably quickly despite lack of a real stimulus. Much credit to the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England of course, but still. This is the type of recession that outright crippled economies, several of them relatively well developed. That there are winners and losers in a recession is self-evident. Some players were exposed, others saw opportunity to buy depreciated assets. This type of scenario favors those with capital, naturally. Hardly conspiratorial however.

Now we switched back to neoliberal (failing) economics. Inflated stocks by artificially low interests is not real economy to begin with.
What the Fed and the Bank of England actually did was preventing the free market from doing what it's supposed to do, eliminate the failing business. In 2007-8, the entire Western financial sector, due to the fact that most financial institutions are interconnected went bust. What the Fed and the US government did was take money from the middle class and pour it into banks that had posted huge losses into leveraged bets. This is inverted socialism, transfer of money from the lower classes to the rich. Once again, what kind of leftist advocates that? You speak of winners and losers as if it's ''market logic'', in this case it's clearly not result of that, it's state intervention. The losers of 2007-8 were and should have been the rich. The upper class was losing fortunes until the US government stepped in. What they did was use taxpayers money to pay the losing bets at the financial markets casino.

Quantitative easing, that you are praising so much is a transfer of wealth from the lower class to the rich:
https://www.theguardian.com/business...x-middle-class
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonhart.../#40bd205f21eb
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2012/0...-for-the-rich/
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-0...ever-explained

Pick the source with your favourite bias (ZH has the best technical explanation, but if you don't like it, feel free), the sentence doesn't change. Propping up endlessly the financial sector was the greatest robbery of all times. And again, this is what a true left wingers care about: distribution of wealth. It's 2017™ ! And I have to teach to leftists how to be a leftist. Mindblowing. I'm leaving this banking debate after this, we are waaay off-topic.

[Abdülmecid I]

One side of the coin is outsourcing, the other side is mass migration. That coin is called lower wages. Lately I have been reading pre-1990 left wing material, I even found this:
https://twitter.com/kompagnoFolagra/...87934243786754


Another problem: automation. Automation is going to kill hundreds of million of jobs, including those of bankers. No jobs, no income, so consumers won't buy anything. So what's the point of insisting on an economic model based on population growth when it's not technologically nor environmentally sustainable?

It's not that simple, the French Communist Party under Georges Marchais was a pioneer of the same tendency you criticize, the slow transformation of purely Marxist parties into a more moderate, center-left version determined to function within a parliamentary democracy and a capitalist system (euro-communism). In fact, I believe that these inherent contradictions of his ideology is what led to absurd statements, like the one you quoted, because, from a Marxist perspective, he completely misses the forests for the trees. Nobody is denying that the arrival of thousands of young men, with little expectations in terms of worker's rights and salaries, will mainly benefit the wealthier classes of the society, which could exploit them more efficiently than the locals*. Only an extremely delusional part of the far-right, which greatly exaggerates the importance of some edgy leftist movements, by considering them their main threat to their well-being, is seriously convinced that these immigrants are accepted, because the government is either afraid of the mysteriously powerful Social Justice Warriors or guilty about colonialism and the Crusades.

Still, by blaming the immigrants for their decreased quality of life and the increased wealth inequality is a very disorientating reaction, because, as you also said, the original source of the problem is the inevitable desire of the capital to reduce its expenses. The ability of outsourcing always existed, especially since the fall of the Soviet Union, but the frustration multiplied, when the competition among workers grew larger, following the 2007-2008 financial crisis. It is similar to how political extremism was boosted from the 1929 Wall Street Crash, but, just like in the '30s, accusing the minorities of stealing your jobs would not be a very effective solution. The crux of the matter lies on the fact that inside a society, including perfectly homogeneous ones, different classes are divided by conflicting interests, based not on their religion, ethnicity or skin colour, but on their position inside the production structure. When the capitalist system experiences its regular collapses, it is very natural that tensions arise over the distribution of a now more limited wealth. The alt-right, by advocating for a nostalgic return to an idealised past, naively hopes that the good, old years of the '50s, when factory owners were supposed to be more patriotic and not corrupted by leftism. It's not going to happen, of course, because technology and society have progressed since then and because the alt-right continuously fails to recognize the problem. Capitalism is not flawless and admitting it as a fact doesn't make you a despicable communist, secretly plotting to restore the Soviet Union.



*On the other hand, thanks to the prosperity achieved in many Western countries, several particularly jobs desperately need the contribution of the immigrants, because the native population is not motivated enough to withstand the harsh conditions for a relatively small payment. By the way, the artificial intelligence revolution doesn't necessarily mean the reduction of available jobs. Every technological advancement creates new needs for the society, which means that very probably the number of jobs will remain the same. The most worrying issue would be the fate of the generations found in the transitional period, so the authorities must take special care into gradually integrating these people (social security, education and etc.) into the modern world.

[Basil II the B.S]

It's not that simple, the French Communist Party under Georges Marchais was a pioneer of the same tendency you criticize, the slow transformation of purely Marxist parties into a more moderate, center-left version determined to function within a parliamentary democracy and a capitalist system (euro-communism). In fact, I believe that these inherent contradictions of his ideology is what led to absurd statements, like the one you quoted, because, from a Marxist perspective, he completely misses the forests for the trees. Nobody is denying that the arrival of thousands of young men, with little expectations in terms of worker's rights and salaries, will mainly benefit the wealthier classes of the society, which could exploit them more efficiently than the locals*. Only an extremely delusional part of the far-right, which greatly exaggerates the importance of some edgy leftist movements, by considering them their main threat to their well-being, is seriously convinced that these immigrants are accepted, because the government is either afraid of the mysteriously powerful Social Justice Warriors or guilty about colonialism and the Crusades.

The division is far more older than France. It actually goes back to the early internationales and the first socialist experiments. Lenin's ''socialism in one country'' being the most notable one. It's simply a preference of gradual revolution because the international global revolution was not going to happen. Some see it as betrayal of non-Western working class, some see it as pragmatism.

When it comes to France, the shift towards ''modern left'' was actually under Mitterrand. He's the first one that tried major socialists overhauls when the world was moving towards neoliberalism. His problem? His committiment to European integration and open markets. What happened was the French state essentially fueling the German economy with social spending, to the point he had to give it up and start the conversion of the left to neoliberal ideas. For most of the West, that happened a decade later.

You mention, social Justice, but it's a millennial thing. Before that it was ''race and gender marxism'' or ''intersectionality'' and it was a fringe irrelevant movement. As for guilt, it's widely promoted. Every time immigration is questioned, it's brought up, not by the ''right'', but by the ''left''. You can't blame the ''right'' for something the ''left'' uses as an argument. What you are telling me is that the left should be free to exploit guilt and shame and not be called out for the dishonesty of the argument. The dishonesty of the argument is that guilt and shame for colonialism is.... racist. Because it puts an inherent negative attribute on an entire race and ironically it's promoted by self proclaimed anti-racist.

Still, by blaming the immigrants for their decreased quality of life and the increased wealth inequality is a very disorientating reaction, because, as you also said, the original source of the problem is the inevitable desire of the capital to reduce its expenses. The ability of outsourcing always existed, especially since the fall of the Soviet Union, but the frustration multiplied, when the competition among workers grew larger, following the 2007-2008 financial crisis. It is similar to how political extremism was boosted from the 1929 Wall Street Crash, but, just like in the '30s, accusing the minorities of stealing your jobs would not be a very effective solution. The crux of the matter lies on the fact that inside a society, including perfectly homogeneous ones, different classes are divided by conflicting interests, based not on their religion, ethnicity or skin colour, but on their position inside the production structure. When the capitalist system experiences its regular collapses, it is very natural that tensions arise over the distribution of a now more limited wealth. The alt-right, by advocating for a nostalgic return to an idealised past, naively hopes that the good, old years of the '50s, when factory owners were supposed to be more patriotic and not corrupted by leftism. It's not going to happen, of course, because technology and society have progressed since then and because the alt-right continuously fails to recognize the problem. Capitalism is not flawless and admitting it as a fact doesn't make you a despicable communist, secretly plotting to restore the Soviet Union.

I mostly agree with this. Let's clarify a point: a this point blaming the immigrants is unnecessary. Immigrants mostly have power on their own individual lives. The ruling class decides how many they want let in. Sure there will be immigrants that commit crimes and all that, in that respect the justice system is disastrous but that's another story, the real issue here is who is deciding how many people are let in. It's not ''immigrants'' the problem. It's the elite and its policy. Mainstream parties have been voted over and over to reduce immigration and they did the opposite. There's a clear demand by the electorate that is being betrayed once in office. Then you can't blame immigrants for that. The problem is the policy maker. Nonetheless, yes, the problem is much broader, indeed outsourcing and the crisis being other key elements. I pointed them out myself in an earlier post.

Immigration is also nothing like the past. People point me out the Italians that went to America in 1800 and at first there were problems. Yes that's all true, but you know what happened? The flow eventually stopped for decades. Then there was a second flow after WW2 but it also stopped. This is not what is happening in the West right now. The flow is never ending and the demographic boom of Africa makes it even further never ending. Italians to the US were 1-2 generations, then the flow stopped, the bad apples ended up in jail, ethnic tensions died out. I look at France, they are at the 5-6th generation and it's not stopping any time soon. So before they can even integrate the current generation, a new generation adds up, contributing to the creation of separate societies. So it's not ''we have seen that before''.

What we are also seeing is a different brand of capitalism. We are no longer in free market capitalism, but a feudal one. The feud is not the land, but the stock ownership. The free market capitalism worked before it operated a darwinian selection of business and industries, the good ones succeeded, the bad ones failed. Free market works because it allows trial and error. The feudal capitalism we live in actively rewards error. That is what has been happening since 2007-8. There's a safety net for the rich. If they do great, they keep their money. If they do bad, society pays. Of course that exhacerbates inequality.

*On the other hand, thanks to the prosperity achieved in many Western countries, several particularly jobs desperately need the contribution of the immigrants, because the native population is not motivated enough to withstand the harsh conditions for a relatively small payment. By the way, the artificial intelligence revolution doesn't necessarily mean the reduction of available jobs. Every technological advancement creates new needs for the society, which means that very probably the number of jobs will remain the same. The most worrying issue would be the fate of the generations found in the transitional period, so the authorities must take special care into gradually integrating these people (social security, education and etc.) into the modern world.

The ''jobs nobody wants to do'' is a diallele. Noone wants to do them because they pay low, so immigrants are brought in specifically so that those jobs can keep paying low.

A clear example is waiters. Lots of waiters in Italy are immigrants on the logic ''Italians don't want to do it''.Yet a lot of Italians go to London to work as waiters. Why? Good salary. Then they leave Italy specifically because of low salaries, that wouldn't be this low if there weren't immigrants. It's a self fullfilling cycle.

Another example is agriculture. We had an example: artificially higher wages in agriculture to see if Italians would do it, and they did. So again, another type of jobs ''Italians don't want to do anymore'' is because of too low salaries. Nobody wants to do it because they pay 1€ a hour, but they pay that because there are and always will be, as long as borders are open, people desperate enough to do it.

The political preference of the ruling Western elite for immigrants is clear: they have lower demands and expecations, in terms of salaries and policies. This is often motivated by the elite as ''immigrants work harder/natives are entitled''. It's not true, it's an argument used to justify exploitation, to put immigrants against natives to avoid them coalizing against the elite. The preference for immigrants is simply on the basis they are more eager to be pawns.

[Abdülmecid I]

The division is far more older than France. It actually goes back to the early internationales and the first socialist experiments. Lenin's ''socialism in one country'' being the most notable one. It's simply a preference of gradual revolution because the international global revolution was not going to happen. Some see it as betrayal of non-Western working class, some see it as pragmatism. When it comes to France, the shift towards ''modern left'' was actually under Mitterrand. He's the first one that tried major socialists overhauls when the world was moving towards neoliberalism. His problem? His committiment to European integration and open markets. What happened was the French state essentially fueling the German economy with social spending, to the point he had to give it up and start the conversion of the left to neoliberal ideas. For most of the West, that happened a decade later.

Describing Lenin's initially moderate policies as part of this tendency is not accurate and has originated from Trotskyist propaganda, disappointed with the abandonment of the global revolution, when the attempts of the young Soviet Union to subvert imperial Germany failed. The Mensheviks and the extremely controversial policy of the Social-Democratic Party during and after WW1 are much more relevant example. The Socialist Party of France essentially never pretended to endorse orthodox Marxism, preferring to be self-identified with social democracy. Fun fact: The quickest way to conclude whether a communist party is revisionist or not is to note how they geographically define themselves: Traditionalists use either the respective proposition or the genitive case, depending on the country's grammar, but revisionists prefer the adjectives, because they want to imply a special interpretation of Marxism, specifically adjusted to the country's particularities. There are exceptions, of course, as the Communist Party of Spain is hardly inspired from the USSR (that would be the even tinier Communist Party of the People of Spain).

You mention, social Justice, but it's a millennial thing. Before that it was ''race and gender marxism'' or ''intersectionality'' and it was a fringe irrelevant movement. As for guilt, it's widely promoted. Every time immigration is questioned, it's brought up, not by the ''right'', but by the ''left''. You can't blame the ''right'' for something the ''left'' uses as an argument. What you are telling me is that the left should be free to exploit guilt and shame and not be called out for the dishonesty of the argument. The dishonesty of the argument is that guilt and shame for colonialism is.... racist. Because it puts an inherent negative attribute on an entire race and ironically it's promoted by self proclaimed anti-racist.

Again, I'm not denying that white guilt is stupid, from both a Marxist and a logical perspective, but its importance in determining state policies is grossly exaggerated by far-right groups, in order to vilify any socialist opposition and to blame for the degradation of the working class' quality of life the supposedly leftist stereotypes, instead of the elephant in the room, the conflicting interests between the various segments of the society.

What we are also seeing is a different brand of capitalism. We are no longer in free market capitalism, but a feudal one. The feud is not the land, but the stock ownership. The free market capitalism worked before it operated a darwinian selection of business and industries, the good ones succeeded, the bad ones failed. Free market works because it allows trial and error. The feudal capitalism we live in actively rewards error. That is what has been happening since 2007-8. There's a safety net for the rich. If they do great, they keep their money. If they do bad, society pays. Of course that exhacerbates inequality.

I disagree completely, because free market capitalism allegedly benefiting the "good" over the "bad" is nothing but wishful thinking. Financial success being mainly based on quality service, innovation and respect towards the consumer is pure fantasy. In reality, it is identical with what you describe as feudal capitalism. And I'm not even meaning that someone needs to be cunning, hypocritical (marketing...) or totally reckless to prosper. When the authorities are absent, then the stronger will prevail and strength is almost exclusively influenced by money. The richer will become richer, at the expense of the weaker, regardless of their cleverness or ethics. The destruction of workers' rights and smaller businesses is a typical symptom of free market capitalism inside the framework of globalisation, where the already wealthier segments of the Western societies, thanks to their more privileged position, are capable of exploiting the new conditions to the detriment of the poorest. Expecting from the free market to reward the best, the most creative, the uncorrupted, is completely utopic.

[Love Mountain]

It's not irrelevant, you are making a huge mess here. Central banks aren't supposed to prop up failing lending business indefinetely. The ECB is specifically forbidden by treaty to do that. Not to mention that the policy you are advocating, unlimited buying, can be done only as long as the currency is accepted, which is dangerous. The US can do it because its currency is internationally, universally accepted, for now. The pound, the yen, the yuan and the euro are also sort of universally accepted. Venezuela's currency however, for instance, is not, and that's why their endless printing is causing hyperinflation.

You can maintain it indefinitely as long as the velocity of money is kept stable. Hyperinflation happens when fear paralyzes the economy. How "tradeable" a currency is, is not particularly important. It is, insofar as it makes things easier for you, but the simple answer is as long as you possess assets you can trade. And a country always has assets.

Now we switched back to neoliberal (failing) economics. Inflated stocks by artificially low interests is not real economy to begin with.
What the Fed and the Bank of England actually did was preventing the free market from doing what it's supposed to do, eliminate the failing business. In 2007-8, the entire Western financial sector, due to the fact that most financial institutions are interconnected went bust. What the Fed and the US government did was take money from the middle class and pour it into banks that had posted huge losses into leveraged bets. This is inverted socialism, transfer of money from the lower classes to the rich. Once again, what kind of leftist advocates that? You speak of winners and losers as if it's ''market logic'', in this case it's clearly not result of that, it's state intervention. The losers of 2007-8 were and should have been the rich. The upper class was losing fortunes until the US government stepped in. What they did was use taxpayers money to pay the losing bets at the financial markets casino.

This is idiotic. You can't propose "shock therapy" on the entire financial sector. Removal of toxic assets and bailout of key sectors were mandatory to prevent a depression. Removing toxic assets out of the market made sure that a "fire-sale" of bank assets did not occur to cover their losses, and by extension, the financial sector, which is the credit line of all economic activity, was untouched. Letting the entire financial sector collapse would've resulted in a domino effect that would've paralyzed many businesses immediately. In that scenario it's not just a few millionaires who suffer losses, its entire chunks of the US population losing jobs and a downward economic spiral that would require a New Deal legislation to rescue.

Quantitative easing, that you are praising so much is a transfer of wealth from the lower class to the rich:
https://www.theguardian.com/business...x-middle-class
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonhart.../#40bd205f21eb
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2012/0...-for-the-rich/
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-0...ever-explained

Pick the source with your favourite bias (ZH has the best technical explanation, but if you don't like it, feel free), the sentence doesn't change. Propping up endlessly the financial sector was the greatest robbery of all times. And again, this is what a true left wingers care about: distribution of wealth. It's 2017™ ! And I have to teach to leftists how to be a leftist. Mindblowing. I'm leaving this banking debate after this, we are waaay off-topic.

Quantitative easing was in fact genius. It stabilized the banks by taking toxic assets out of the financial sector and making sure that the rest of the economy could sort itself out. In addition to that, the deflationary economy climate as well as the over leveraged situation of most banks made sure that the new money was kept in reserves. As the Fed raises interest rates, it'll only ensure that most of the money will be kept out of the market. This is not about the left or the right. This is about making sure the economy is ticking.

[Basil II the B.S]

Describing Lenin's initially moderate policies as part of this tendency is not accurate and has originated from Trotskyist propaganda, disappointed with the abandonment of the global revolution, when the attempts of the young Soviet Union to subvert imperial Germany failed. The Mensheviks and the extremely controversial policy of the Social-Democratic Party during and after WW1 are much more relevant example. The Socialist Party of France essentially never pretended to endorse orthodox Marxism, preferring to be self-identified with social democracy. Fun fact: The quickest way to conclude whether a communist party is revisionist or not is to note how they geographically define themselves: Traditionalists use either the respective proposition or the genitive case, depending on the country's grammar, but revisionists prefer the adjectives, because they want to imply a special interpretation of Marxism, specifically adjusted to the country's particularities. There are exceptions, of course, as the Communist Party of Spain is hardly inspired from the USSR (that would be the even tinier Communist Party of the People of Spain).

Which... is another way of saying that the communist spectrum was never united on anything, since pretty much the First Internationale. It has always been a problem of the left. Nonetheless there was never this great push for mass migration. There was the idea to coalize the global proletariat, yes, not to transfer everyone to Europe.

The liberal idea of ''open borders'' is not what the socialist one.

Again, I'm not denying that white guilt is stupid, from both a Marxist and a logical perspective, but its importance in determining state policies is grossly exaggerated by far-right groups, in order to vilify any socialist opposition and to blame for the degradation of the working class' quality of life the supposedly leftist stereotypes, instead of the elephant in the room, the conflicting interests between the various segments of the society.

I agree we should focus on conflicting class interests right now as they are the predominant division in the West.

I disagree completely, because free market capitalism allegedly benefiting the "good" over the "bad" is nothing but wishful thinking. Financial success being mainly based on quality service, innovation and respect towards the consumer is pure fantasy. In reality, it is identical with what you describe as feudal capitalism. And I'm not even meaning that someone needs to be cunning, hypocritical (marketing...) or totally reckless to prosper. When the authorities are absent, then the stronger will prevail and strength is almost exclusively influenced by money. The richer will become richer, at the expense of the weaker, regardless of their cleverness or ethics. The destruction of workers' rights and smaller businesses is a typical symptom of free market capitalism inside the framework of globalisation, where the already wealthier segments of the Western societies, thanks to their more privileged position, are capable of exploiting the new conditions to the detriment of the poorest. Expecting from the free market to reward the best, the most creative, the uncorrupted, is completely utopic.

Your mistake here is to think that free market social mobility only works upwards, which isn't true. Downwards social mobility is part of it as well. If you are rich and you mess up to the point you lose everything, you lose everything. You can of course think of ways to mitigate the impact of gains and losses, that was the original goal of social democracy. Mitigate and redistribute.

Also, a true free market prevents monopolies/oligopolies, Adam Smith's free market is about striving towards perfect competition, meaning small business. This is clearly not the current state of affairs.

The problem with feudal capitalism isn't just that the rich can't fail, it's that, combined with inheritance. So if you are born rich, no matter how many times you mess up, you have a safety net, either provided by your parents wealth or by society. This is why we get so many irresponsible people at the top, that includes but not limited to Donald Trump.

You can maintain it indefinitely as long as the velocity of money is kept stable. Hyperinflation happens when fear paralyzes the economy. How "tradeable" a currency is, is not particularly important. It is, insofar as it makes things easier for you, but the simple answer is as long as you possess assets you can trade. And a country always has assets.

Venezuela has enormous oil assets, its currency is down the drain. It doesn't always work.

This is idiotic. You can't propose "shock therapy" on the entire financial sector. Removal of toxic assets and bailout of key sectors were mandatory to prevent a depression. Removing toxic assets out of the market made sure that a "fire-sale" of bank assets did not occur to cover their losses, and by extension, the financial sector, which is the credit line of all economic activity, was untouched. Letting the entire financial sector collapse would've resulted in a domino effect that would've paralyzed many businesses immediately. In that scenario it's not just a few millionaires who suffer losses, its entire chunks of the US population losing jobs and a downward economic spiral that would require a New Deal legislation to rescue.

3 things: -The lack of a market inflicted shock therapy on the financial sector due to its own corruption has resulted in a shock therapy on social services in Europe. So to save your banks, healthcare, among other things, had to be cut.
How can a leftwinger advocate that?

-What you call asset removal, was, again, funded by the Middle Class. Rich people lost leveraged bets, people pay. This is robbery.

-For these people not to lose their jobs, someone else had to, someone else without a safety net had their lives ruined because you didn't want to ruin the lives of the upper class.

Yes, the Western world needed to rebuild the financial sector from scratch, starting by nationalizing central banks, because the current model failed.Then we can start by having the central bank providing credit to business. The financial sector is the middle man in this, it failed at its job, it needs to go. The market said so.

I want a New Deal for the middle class, you accepted the New Deal for the rich. You can call yourself a leftist if you want, but you don't really care about the lower classes. There's no economic or moral justification for the massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. It's utterly ludicrous you present it as such.

The funny thing about your position is that it's not pro-free market, because you advocate propping up failed business with taxpayers money, it's not even socialist or social democrat because you ignore the massive consequences on wealth distribution. It's .... what libertarians call crony capitalism.

Quantitative easing was in fact genius. It stabilized the banks by taking toxic assets out of the financial sector and making sure that the rest of the economy could sort itself out. In addition to that, the deflationary economy climate as well as the over leveraged situation of most banks made sure that the new money was kept in reserves. As the Fed raises interest rates, it'll only ensure that most of the money will be kept out of the market. This is not about the left or the right. This is about making sure the economy is ticking.

It destroyed the middle class and had Donald Trump elected. Truly genius. Social upheaval is not going away anytime soon as long as the money is not given back to those who deserve it, and those who messed up are finally put on trial for their crimes.

The economy is ticking, only for the rich. Once again, you care nothing about wealth distribution. The only reason I don't even get mad anymore is that if the left, or alleged such, doesn't do its job, someone else will, because there's a demand for protection from the lower classes. If you do not understand this, then you aren't understanding what's going on in the Western world right now.

[NorseThing]

3 things: -The lack of a market inflicted shock therapy on the financial sector due to its own corruption has resulted in a shock therapy on social services in Europe. So to save your banks, healthcare, among other things, had to be cut.
How can a leftwinger advocate that?

I tried to follow your post but this bit makes no sense to me. Can you explain please? In economics a shock is not predictable and the market cannot make a sentient action. I also do not see your linkage between cutting healthcare (what was cut -- specifically) and how that was needed to save the banks. You seem to mixing pieces of your own political ideas together here. The individual banks were not attempted to be saved (despite the meme on too big to fail). The banking system was desired to be saved.

[Love Mountain]

Venezuela has enormous oil assets, its currency is down the drain. It doesn't always work.

The incompetence of the Venezuelan government does not indicate that the theory is wrong. It merely shows that Maduro is incompetent.

3 things: -The lack of a market inflicted shock therapy on the financial sector due to its own corruption has resulted in a shock therapy on social services in Europe. So to save your banks, healthcare, among other things, had to be cut.
How can a leftwinger advocate that?

I'm not advocating that. None of the social services had to be cut. Fiscal policy is not controlled by the central bank. I'm against Austerity. IMO, Europe should've taken on more debt and the ECB should've acted faster and more decisively. Blame the Germans and the OECD for that.

-What you call asset removal, was, again, funded by the Middle Class. Rich people lost leveraged bets, people pay. This is robbery.

-For these people not to lose their jobs, someone else had to, someone else without a safety net had their lives ruined because you didn't want to ruin the lives of the upper class.

Open market operations are funded by money created from thin air.

Rescuing the financial system does not mean everyone gets bailed out. It means the banks get bailed out. Either way, everyone with common sense already exited the game with a bunch of cash on their backs. Austerity policies ruined the social safety nets. Not monetary policy.

Yes, the Western world needed to rebuild the financial sector from scratch, starting by nationalizing central banks, because the current model failed.Then we can start by having the central bank providing credit to business. The financial sector is the middle man in this, it failed at its job, it needs to go. The market said so.

We need better regulations and oversight, nationalizing the banks is merely going to nationalize the problem.

I want a New Deal for the middle class, you accepted the New Deal for the rich. You can call yourself a leftist if you want, but you don't really care about the lower classes. There's no economic or moral justification for the massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. It's utterly ludicrous you present it as such.

Fiscal policy has nothing to do with monetary policy. And a financial sector is crucial to promoting business innovation and enterprise.

The funny thing about your position is that it's not pro-free market, because you advocate propping up failed business with taxpayers money, it's not even socialist or social democrat because you ignore the massive consequences on wealth distribution. It's .... what libertarians call crony capitalism.

Maintaining economic prosperity and a fair competitive marketplace means intervening in the economy.



It destroyed the middle class and had Donald Trump elected. Truly genius. Social upheaval is not going away anytime soon as long as the money is not given back to those who deserve it, and those who messed up are finally put on trial for their crimes.

The economy is ticking, only for the rich. Once again, you care nothing about wealth distribution. The only reason I don't even get mad anymore is that if the left, or alleged such, doesn't do its job, someone else will, because there's a demand for protection from the lower classes. If you do not understand this, then you aren't understanding what's going on in the Western world right now.[/QUOTE]

[Basil II the B.S]

I tried to follow your post but this bit makes no sense to me. Can you explain please? In economics a shock is not predictable and the market cannot make a sentient action. I also do not see your linkage between cutting healthcare (what was cut -- specifically) and how that was needed to save the banks. You seem to mixing pieces of your own political ideas together here. The individual banks were not attempted to be saved (despite the meme on too big to fail). The banking system was desired to be saved.

Market logic (with this I'm not saying the market has a mind, I'm describing how it works):
-if a business is successful, it makes profits
-if a business is not successful, it goes bust

Thus there's an evolutionary selection of efficient business, the efficient ones remain, the inefficient ones disappear.
Why does this apply to the entire financial sector?

Here it gets complicated, but I'll try to explain, I highly recommend reading ''The Big Short'' because it makes the topic readable for the average reader without a financial background.

What happened during the big era of financialization, mostly the Bill Clinton presidency is this:
-commercial banks started giving out subprime mortgages: loans to clients that did not meet the criteria for the loan, meaning they were not likely to repay back; commercial banks expected this but they knew that the loan not repaid by the client would be refunded by the government agencies Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae.
-investment banks saw this and decided to create ''mortgage backed securities'': meaning they would pool all the subprime mortgages together and sell it to a client
-before being accepted in the financial markets, mortgage backed securities have to be rated by rating agencies; now a subprime mortgage backed security due to its subprime nature is likely to be a highly risky investment, because it's probable that those who take the loans won't be repaid back. However investment banks, namely Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs found a loophole in the rating model of rating agencies, thus would create the security in a way that it would get a AAA rating (meaning totally safe investment, the highest possible) instead of BBB or CCC, meaning junk. So investment banks effectively defrauded their own clients and rating agencies.

It doesn't stop there:
-after a while, rating agencies noticed what Goldman was doing, they said nothing because they were afraid of fighting the big banks
-insurance agencies decided to offer insurance on subprime mortgage backed securities; just like any insurance, you pay a yearly premium, if element subject to insurance goes bust (whether it's a house or a financial security it's irrelevant) the insurance company pays you. The insurance company makes money by accumulating premiums hoping that the subject of the insurance does not go bust.
-hedge funds noticed the profitability of all of this and started buying or selling insurances according to their strategies; note that these insurances were leveraged, meaning the premium and the reward in case of bust are multiple times the value of the security insured


What happened in 2007-8 is that the whole castle of cards crumbled. Subprime mortgages were being given out by commercial banks to.... strippers, low income immigrants etc. basically the bottom of society. Defaults started. All of a sudden, AAA rated mortgaged backed securities sold for millions started losing 40-80% of their value, this created a hole for many banks/investment companies that had bought them. Lehmann Brothers had a lot of those and went bankrupt. Some went down to zero, meaning insurance companies, like AIG, that made billions in premiums over the year, had to start having to repay those who had bought the insurance on mortgage backed securities from them. But since the compensantion was leveraged, AIG had to start paying billions and was about to go bankrupt as well. Morgan Stanley lost 9$ billion in one day and they were going under too.

Now due to the fact that investment banks either owned some mortgage backed securities, or had to pay the compensation because they sold insurance, or owned shares of banks/hedge funds that owned mortgage backed securities or sold insurance, the entire Wester financial sector was crumbling. Institutions are all linked to each other, they all participated in the debauchery, they were all failing.

Let's go back to the free market logic I described at the beginning: if a business is good, it makes money, if a business is inefficient it goes bust. Now, the above described system is not a single business, it's' all of them, the entire industry. Nonetheless, if we were in free market capitalism, they are all bust. They should all disappear. That's the logic of the free market.

You can't even argue someone at some level should be salvaged. The problems were at all levels: commercial banks defrauding low income clients, investment banks cheating the rating system, rating agencies overlooking it, leveraged bets on intentionally misleading rated financial instruments, there's nothing to save there.

And what exactly happened? The US government under both Bush and Obama, stepped in. They used taxpayers money to repay the compensation from insurance or bought worthless mortgage backed securities. Those who made billions via those transactions until 2007, but would have lost everything in 2007-8, got to keep everything, because their losses were being covered by the US government.

This is nothing short of criminal. Revolution worthy. The problem is, it is actually too complicated for the average American.

--------

Moving to healthcare: due to free capital movement that is a cornerstone of the Treaty of Maastricht of the EU, lots of European banks (namely the big 3 of France: Soc Gen, Credite Agricole, BNP Paribas and the big two of Germany, Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank) that had invested in mortgage backed securities or sold insurances started posting losses too. Thus they had to start cutting loans to the private sector of Europe which in turn sent many European countries into a recession. A number of countries of the Eurozone, namely Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain were running budget deficits at the time. If you are running a deficit and a recessions starts, your deficits skyrockets and so does your debt eventually. So financial markets started thinking that the ''PIGS'' would default on their debts too, especially because they no longer have a national central bank, because the ECB does not do, by treaty lending of last resort. The Eurozone debt crisis unfolded and the solution decided by the EU was that those countries with deficits problems should adopt austerity, meaning starting cuts on pensions, healthcare and all the other forms of social security so that their deficits would diminuish the deficits so that markets calmed down and stopped believing that Greece or Portugal or Spain would defailt.

So, because a bunch of greedy pigs in New York city messed up epically, Southern Europe (mostly, Ireland is the Northern exception) had to undergo a shock therapy to its social security.

Great!

[Love Mountain]

Actually you had to undergo shock therapy because European governments decided to enact Austerity instead of traditional Keynesian policies. Has nothing to do with monetary policy.

[Basil II the B.S]

a) Southern European governments were forced to. The democratically elected Berlusconi government in Italy was removed at the demand of the EU, because he didn't want to implement austerity, and replaced with the Monti technocratic one, that implemented austerity specifically, ''because Europe asks us to''. When the reshuffling resulted in the Monti government being replaced by the Letta one, 1 and a half year later, Italy was also forced to change its constitution and add the clause of balanced budget, again specifically under the threat that the ECB would otherwise block the cash flows to Italian banks.

b) The blockade of the cash flows was implemented briefly against Greece in 2015 when the Greeks elected Tsipras to stop austerity. The Tsipras government was choked by the ECB in less than 6 months and forced again to implement austerity.

c) The two experiences above, combined with the fact that European governments no longer control their own central banks, make it impossible to run an effectual Keynesian policy.

d) The best you can get is Keynesian-light done by Portugal in the past year or so, long after the damage has been done anyway.

e) In the past 2 years the EU has additionally added the ''Fiscal compact'', which is essentially more austerity.

f) The Eurozone Finance Minister proposed by Macron to ''reform the Eurozone'' will effectively deprive even more national governments from the possibility to run Keynesian policy and is already being hijacked by Germany to force more ''rigor'', which of-course benefits Germany itself because it prevents other European countries from returning to competitiveness.

In conclusion, due to the large imbalance of power created by the privatization of central banks, national governments are now fully hostage to financial institutions and their greed. The same financial institutions that due to their own greed and recklessness, described in my previous post, caused the crisis.

The only country that did what everyone should do is Iceland: they jailed bankers, nationalized the central bank, withdrew the bid to join the EU, because the cost would be joining the club of getting screwed by bankers. As long as the EU is in its current form, it's an enemy of the people. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it'll change any time soon.

All reasons I keep calling this whole development as it is: it's a class war, between the financial elite against everyone else; and as such it should be fought.

[dogukan]

And I'm not even advocating socialism. All I'm saying is, you can't be a leftist if you advocate policies that damage the working class. The left, today, has completely lost it on this topic.

Ehehehehe, when you spend years in a forum and become a community, its remarkable to see the changes in attitudes of posters.
You had been the staunchest supporter of free market efficiency argument. Migration is "efficiency" allocating resources You have to "endure" it until it stabilizes just like you endure for "trickle-down effects".

Here is an important point on Euro-Communism and the transformation of left in Europe which traditional socialists despised:

It's not that simple, the French Communist Party under Georges Marchais was a pioneer of the same tendency you criticize, the slow transformation of purely Marxist parties into a more moderate, center-left version determined to function within a parliamentary democracy and a capitalist system (euro-communism). In fact, I believe that these inherent contradictions of his ideology is what led to absurd statements, like the one you quoted, because, from a Marxist perspective, he completely misses the forests for the trees. Nobody is denying that the arrival of thousands of young men, with little expectations in terms of worker's rights and salaries, will mainly benefit the wealthier classes of the society, which could exploit them more efficiently than the locals*. Only an extremely delusional part of the far-right, which greatly exaggerates the importance of some edgy leftist movements, by considering them their main threat to their well-being, is seriously convinced that these immigrants are accepted, because the government is either afraid of the mysteriously powerful Social Justice Warriors or guilty about colonialism and the Crusades.

@Basil II, so now you have to specify left. This capitalism-integrated Euro-com originating left is essentially an extension of the social democrats of the second international which the revolutionaries despised.
Why were they despised?
The "left" does not look at national borders but at the global conflict between forces of capital and the labour. Labour is nation-less. Labour is the creator of wealth according to the traditional left.
Left does not argue for seperating labour to nations but argue to unite them against the capital. Rallying for social democratic positions to preserve local labour was seen essentially as acceptance of a stagnant unequal exploitative global economic order. But it would have of course lost votes to left to take this position and hence it is only embraced by the radical left whereas the social democratic position is not really in a different position to establishment now.

This has been the general tendency of left throughout the cold war and period before that until the collapse of communism.
The whole paradigm was based on metropoles exploiting the 3rd world to create surplus and wealth in developed country's and left in those countries were more concerned with ending the exploitation outside. Think of the 60s and the staunch resistance against America's wars around the globe, Latin America and East Asia.

EVERYTHING has changed now. This old world order has qualitatively changed. The "exploited" world did not remain where they are due to epxloitation but were as a result of investments and technology transfers along with(depending on local policies) capital accmulation of local powers have turned into capitalist machines themselves pulling down the profit-marging of the west based economic machines.
This is an ongoing process but the consensus is that the "repression of local economy" by westerners is not really a solid argument anymore(so essentially this is also the end of the neo-marxist arguments of 50s,60s, 70s). Though one could still argue that intervetions such as in Syria where the Assad government was reforming the economy and making a huge industrial complex to be able exploit its own labour is remnants of these old days. (But Turkey and other Arab powers had more of a stake in destroying a potentially emerging Syrian industry than Europeans which shows you that what fills definition "imperialists" have also expanded with development of capitalism in periphery economies. It was all about the evil America before )

My beef with the current conjucture however is that
1) left is not managing this situation well
2) We have a TOTALLY NEW PLAYER in town and it is extremely powerfull and traditional left-right conflict could not really identify this until recently. That is political Islam. As the profile of immigrants to Europe is mostly from the Muslim geography, what rallies them isn't the "left" anymore. In Gramscian terms, the hegemony breaking ideas are not fed progressivist radical left ideologies but rather by POLITICAL ISLAM.

This process produces a totally unwanted form of polarization between left-right. The discussion is not over econonmy, living standards and exploitation but over identities. And left could not really manage to read the immigrants.
This is not like early 20th century America when immigrants from Europe flocked to the trade unions and socialist groups.
The dominating issues are now far more weird and inconsistent and does not really even offer a solution. There is a bit of a deadlock and old establishment ideologies are clashing with themselves where left is embracing Islamists and pro-market right wing is opposing the pillars of capitalist development.

The world is upside-down and we are in a huge transitional period reminiscent of the 80s that changed the whole conjucture of the world. If globalization ended the modern period, we are at the edge of the post-modern period and what is ahead of us is not clear with all the developments in the world.

The division is far more older than France. It actually goes back to the early internationales and the first socialist experiments. Lenin's ''socialism in one country'' being the most notable one. It's simply a preference of gradual revolution because the international global revolution was not going to happen. Some see it as betrayal of non-Western working class, some see it as pragmatism.

Lenin never theorized a socialism in one country. Lenin expected revolution to spread, Trotsky prepared an army for the invasion of Europe expecting workers to join their cause.
It was inner problems and defeat by Poles that stopped this. Socialism in one country is completely a product of Stalin's ideas.

[Basil II the B.S]

Ehehehehe, when you spend years in a forum and become a community, its remarkable to see the changes in attitudes of posters.
You had been the staunchest supporter of free market efficiency argument. Migration is "efficiency" allocating resources You have to "endure" it until it stabilizes just like you endure for "trickle-down effects".

Here is an important point on Euro-Communism and the transformation of left in Europe which traditional socialists despised:

What Western governments from 2008 does not qualify as free market in any way. Preserving inefficient business isn't what Adam Smith prescribes.

@Basil II, so now you have to specify left. This capitalism-integrated Euro-com originating left is essentially an extension of the social democrats of the second international which the revolutionaries despised.
Why were they despised?
The "left" does not look at national borders but at the global conflict between forces of capital and the labour. Labour is nation-less. Labour is the creator of wealth according to the traditional left.
Left does not argue for seperating labour to nations but argue to unite them against the capital. Rallying for social democratic positions to preserve local labour was seen essentially as acceptance of a stagnant unequal exploitative global economic order. But it would have of course lost votes to left to take this position and hence it is only embraced by the radical left whereas the social democratic position is not really in a different position to establishment now.

This has been the general tendency of left throughout the cold war and period before that until the collapse of communism.

Yes, this is what the left is supposed to be about . Which at any point means we should transfer cheap labour to Europe to compete with the European working class for lower salaries.
You are supposed to unite the working class, not make it compete for the profit of the capitalist.

The whole paradigm was based on metropoles exploiting the 3rd world to create surplus and wealth in developed country's and left in those countries were more concerned with ending the exploitation outside. Think of the 60s and the staunch resistance against America's wars around the globe, Latin America and East Asia.

EVERYTHING has changed now. This old world order has qualitatively changed. The "exploited" world did not remain where they are due to epxloitation but were as a result of investments and technology transfers along with(depending on local policies) capital accmulation of local powers have turned into capitalist machines themselves pulling down the profit-marging of the west based economic machines.
This is an ongoing process but the consensus is that the "repression of local economy" by westerners is not really a solid argument anymore(so essentially this is also the end of the neo-marxist arguments of 50s,60s, 70s). Though one could still argue that intervetions such as in Syria where the Assad government was reforming the economy and making a huge industrial complex to be able exploit its own labour is remnants of these old days. (But Turkey and other Arab powers had more of a stake in destroying a potentially emerging Syrian industry than Europeans which shows you that what fills definition "imperialists" have also expanded with development of capitalism in periphery economies. It was all about the evil America before )

That is also correct, the whole Arab Spring, just like the ''EuroMaidan'' are US imperialism in the never ending attempt to ''open new markets''. But that's standard imperialism combined with the economic needs of the US. Imperialism existed long before capitalism.

My beef with the current conjucture however is that
1) left is not managing this situation well

The left was unable to escape (again) Michels ''Iron law of the oligarchy''. I mentioned it before. It went through an irreparable process of bourgeoisezation. There are very few individuals who still care about wealth redistribution and class interest. Young leftwingers are all fake left. Full on identity politics, clueless about class struggle, and they mostly hail from upper class background anyway.

Similarly, true liberalism is also dying. First it became the fringe of libertarians, but now even those are losing it. Free speech and free markets are losing.

2) We have a TOTALLY NEW PLAYER in town and it is extremely powerfull and traditional left-right conflict could not really identify this until recently. That is political Islam. As the profile of immigrants to Europe is mostly from the Muslim geography, what rallies them isn't the "left" anymore. In Gramscian terms, the hegemony breaking ideas are not fed progressivist radical left ideologies but rather by POLITICAL ISLAM.

That is another ideological suicide of both leftwingers and true liberals. Liberals sold out because they like the money from Saudi Arabia and Qatar and they more or less openly admit that the safety of Europeans and freedom values are less important that than Saudi/Qatari investment.

The left is paralyzed by itself due to the adoption of identity politics as its core ideology instead of socialism. Indeed political Islam thrives into this. It's actually the least corrupt of the 3.

This process produces a totally unwanted form of polarization between left-right. The discussion is not over econonmy, living standards and exploitation but over identities. And left could not really manage to read the immigrants.
This is not like early 20th century America when immigrants from Europe flocked to the trade unions and socialist groups.

The thing is, Europeans went to the US in waves. There was a wave of 1-2 decades, then 50 years of nothing, then another wave. This gave a chance to the US to integrate people. What's happening to Europe right now is completely different. it's a never ending multi-decade wave that isn't going to stop any time soon.

The dominating issues are now far more weird and inconsistent and does not really even offer a solution. There is a bit of a deadlock and old establishment ideologies are clashing with themselves where left is embracing Islamists and pro-market right wing is opposing the pillars of capitalist development.

The world is upside-down and we are in a huge transitional period reminiscent of the 80s that changed the whole conjucture of the world. If globalization ended the modern period, we are at the edge of the post-modern period and what is ahead of us is not clear with all the developments in the world.

Indeed the 90s changed a lot of things. Post 2008 basically sealed the end of dominant ideologies in the West.

[NorseThing]

Immigration is part of the policies and one of the worst ones.

I'll give you the explanation: one of the things people (rightfully) protest about, especially trade unions, is outsourcing. Outsourcing became popular in the 80s, under Reagan and Thatcher, the era of free capital molibity. The intention was clear: trade unions are too powerful, so to curb their power, you use the threat of moving capital (thus the factory) elsewhere, where trade unions are weaker and so are worker's rights.
In the 90s they added immigration: if you can exploit workers in a third world country, then why not allow in millions of them, so that you can exploit them in the West? If you are the capitalist you don't even need to waste money to move to factory to, let's say China. Immigration is a huge bargain..... for the capital owner. If you don't own capital then you are worse off. If you are a salaried worker, immigration crashes you.

One side of the coin is outsourcing, the other side is mass migration. That coin is called lower wages. Lately I have been reading pre-1990 left wing material, I even found this:
https://twitter.com/kompagnoFolagra/...87934243786754

This is the French communist party in 1980: ''stop migration, legal or illegal''. They knew what it was all about.


And I'm not even advocating socialism. All I'm saying is, you can't be a leftist if you advocate policies that damage the working class. The left, today, has completely lost it on this topic.

Want further evidence? Even Jeremy Corbyn who's a last bastion of the dying old left in the UK called out mass migration of cheap labour destroying the working class:
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics...itions-british

Which of course resulted in the liberal left, the bourgeoise, upper class represented by The Guardian throwing a tantrum about Corbyn being a xenophobe:
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...rbyn-attitudes

and the usual shower of insults ''bigots and ignorants''. Because they are fine people when you pander to them, but if someone else panders to the working class and they listen to him, then they are biggits and ignorants.

The funny thing about that article is that it uses the usual empty argument against ''neoliberalism'' while at the same time supporting open borders and mass migration... a neoliberal policy. That's the state of the modern left.


------

edit: I can also explain why a bank like BBVA, just like most banks support immigration. If you look at the models of big business like global banks, they have debt sustainability scenarios. For the debt to be sustainabile, the business must keep growing. For the business to grow, they need new consumers. Now, if population in the West was growing, it'd be enough for the banks to have a sustainable business, but it's not growing at all, it's shrinking. Meaning banks can't rely on the natural population growth to sustain their business, so they have increase competition among themselves, or they push for immigration so that it adds new potential customers.

Where's the problem in this? Because, it makes the need for population growth lasting forever. Banks will always need more customers so that the business is sustainable. But it's not sustainable on a social level and, if you are truly worried about climate change, then it's not environmentally sustainable either. That's why the ''more people equals more GDP'' is a massively blind argument. Can earth keep going with 10 billion people so that banks can be sustainable? What about 20 billion? I'm not an expert on climate change, I actually avoid debating it, but one issue often brought to the table is population growth sustainability. Then the West doesn't need more people. The world doesn't need more people. The West is already shrinking on its own, East Asia has peaked. The problem is Africa.

Another problem: automation. Automation is going to kill hundreds of million of jobs, including those of bankers. No jobs, no income, so consumers won't buy anything. So what's the point of insisting on an economic model based on population growth when it's not technologically nor environmentally sustainable?

Basil -- I am backing this up to your first post. Outsourcing is protested by people who have lost a job and / or think their prospects are diminished in the future. It is an easy thing to focus blame on outsourcing and wages. That does not mean is accurate to do so. Ross Perot was famous for decrying the big sucking sound with NAFTA. Pres. Trump dislikes immigration and trade deals as well. So it is not just thing with any particular political philosophy. You mention a coin with two sides being the coin of wages. Actually the coin may be more of an idealized libertarian world where there is free movement of both labor and capital. We do not live in such an idealized world though. There are practical and legal restrictions on both the movement of capital and labor to varying degrees in every country. I do not buy into the idea that this is really an issue with banks and profit though. It is more fundamental at the level of your family and mine at a micro level. Much of the macro questions are really a result of stacking up many micro level decision.

Banks do not always need more customers to be sustainable. That would be a Ponzi-like scheme which is not what banks are. Banks are sustainable when they are profitable which may mean simply constraining the costs of doing business with better use of people. innovation in product development, and yes applying new technology etc.

It has been mentioned somewhere in this thread that central banks are privatized. I cannot speak for all central banks, but the Federal Reserve is government owned and controlled and is not a privatized institution.

Just as banks do not need growth to be sustainable, the USA aggregate economy does not need population growth to be sustainable either. (and pretty much for the same reasons) We also do not need immigration to be sustainable either. Population growth and immigration are more of value issues than required issues for sustainability. The same can be said for your fears of automation as well, but that will just ramble on even more than I have aleady done with this post. I do not want emphasize Ponzi-like schemes, but your premise for this thread seems to assume this and the premise is false.

[Basil II the B.S]

Basil -- I am backing this up to your first post. Outsourcing is protested by people who have lost a job and / or think their prospects are diminished in the future. It is an easy thing to focus blame on outsourcing and wages. That does not mean is accurate to do so. Ross Perot was famous for decrying the big sucking sound with NAFTA. Pres. Trump dislikes immigration and trade deals as well. So it is not just thing with any particular political philosophy. You mention a coin with two sides being the coin of wages. Actually the coin may be more of an idealized libertarian world where there is free movement of both labor and capital. We do not live in such an idealized world though. There are practical and legal restrictions on both the movement of capital and labor to varying degrees in every country. I do not buy into the idea that this is really an issue with banks and profit though. It is more fundamental at the level of your family and mine at a micro level. Much of the macro questions are really a result of stacking up many micro level decision.

The ''open borders'' libertarian case is represented by Cato Institute. However they see it as Milton Friedman: open borders are incompatible with the welfare state. Meaning you can have unlimited immigration but it'll make welfare unsustainable and abolished.
https://openborders.info/blog/tag/cato-institute/

Once again we have entered the neoliberal field that the left claims to hate. The thing is, Cato Institute knows what it's doing. The push for immigration to abolish welfare state, because that's the stance of the Koch brothers. The left does not.

Nonetheless I disagree entirely with the underlying reasoning: 1 unit of labor can be replaced without consequences. 1 person from Japan can be replaced with one from South America. I disagree with that. Culture matters and we see that in Europe. The commoditization of people is a major mistake of modern economics.

It has been mentioned somewhere in this thread that central banks are privatized. I cannot speak for all central banks, but the Federal Reserve is government owned and controlled and is not a privatized institution.

This will come as a big shock for you:
http://www.factcheck.org/2008/03/fed...ank-ownership/

Or I find this technical explanation better:
http://www.businessinsider.com/who-a...e-2013-10?IR=T

At best, it's co-owned but the US government and the banking sector.

Banks do not always need more customers to be sustainable. That would be a Ponzi-like scheme which is not what banks are. Banks are sustainable when they are profitable which may mean simply constraining the costs of doing business with better use of people. innovation in product development, and yes applying new technology etc.

Just as banks do not need growth to be sustainable, the USA aggregate economy does not need population growth to be sustainable either. (and pretty much for the same reasons) We also do not need immigration to be sustainable either. Population growth and immigration are more of value issues than required issues for sustainability. The same can be said for your fears of automation as well, but that will just ramble on even more than I have aleady done with this post. I do not want emphasize Ponzi-like schemes, but your premise for this thread seems to assume this and the premise is false.

The imperative for growth comes from debt sustainability, I explained that before. This comes from the fact that most banks are listed on the stock exchange, thus investors must be given an explanation on why they should buy the bank shares, despite it having so much debt. I say this by looking at the quarterly report and prospects that any listed company has to post: all of them has 3-5 scenarios; all that you mentioned above, technology, improvement of people etc. are elements, but so is the growth of the number of customers.The growth of any business depends on the growth of the number of customers. Again, you can increase the number of customers by offering better products and taking them from the competition, but as a general rule, if the population of the country you are operating in increases, then your potential consumer base increases. It's actually that simple and... stupid. And yes, it isn't that far from the concept of Ponzi scheme.

You might argue I'm talking out of my ass, but look up all the arguments used by pro-immigration supporters: one of the first economic reason brought to the table always boils down to the simple concept: more people equals more GDP; as exemplified by the article Mishkin posted based on the research of the bank BBVA.

--''But come on Basil, this is idiotic, it can't be that simple, economists are smart''.

This is another example of what I'm talking about:

https://www.economist.com/news/world...ould-be-bribed

More people equals more GDP.

This is all the great minds behind immigration can think of.

It is idiotic and that simple.

[NorseThing]

The ''open borders'' libertarian case is represented by Cato Institute. However they see it as Milton Friedman: open borders are incompatible with the welfare state. Meaning you can have unlimited immigration but it'll make welfare unsustainable and abolished.
https://openborders.info/blog/tag/cato-institute/

Once again we have entered the neoliberal field that the left claims to hate. The thing is, Cato Institute knows what it's doing. The push for immigration to abolish welfare state, because that's the stance of the Koch brothers. The left does not.

Nonetheless I disagree entirely with the underlying reasoning: 1 unit of labor can be replaced without consequences. 1 person from Japan can be replaced with one from South America. I disagree with that. Culture matters and we see that in Europe. The commoditization of people is a major mistake of modern economics.



This will come as a big shock for you:
http://www.factcheck.org/2008/03/fed...ank-ownership/

Or I find this technical explanation better:
http://www.businessinsider.com/who-a...e-2013-10?IR=T

At best, it's co-owned but the US government and the banking sector.




The imperative for growth comes from debt sustainability, I explained that before. This comes from the fact that most banks are listed on the stock exchange, thus investors must be given an explanation on why they should buy the bank shares, despite it having so much debt. I say this by looking at the quarterly report and prospects that any listed company has to post: all of them has 3-5 scenarios; all that you mentioned above, technology, improvement of people etc. are elements, but so is the growth of the number of customers.The growth of any business depends on the growth of the number of customers. Again, you can increase the number of customers by offering better products and taking them from the competition, but as a general rule, if the population of the country you are operating in increases, then your potential consumer base increases. It's actually that simple and... stupid. And yes, it isn't that far from the concept of Ponzi scheme.

You might argue I'm talking out of my ass, but look up all the arguments used by pro-immigration supporters: one of the first economic reason brought to the table always boils down to the simple concept: more people equals more GDP; as exemplified by the article Mishkin posted based on the research of the bank BBVA.

--''But come on Basil, this is idiotic, it can't be that simple, economists are smart''.

This is another example of what I'm talking about:

https://www.economist.com/news/world...ould-be-bribed

More people equals more GDP.

This is all the great minds behind immigration can think of.

It is idiotic and that simple.

There is a great deal in your post, but I will focus on only the Central banking system in the USA. The Federal Reserve system is government owned and operated. The branch banks are just that, branches within the government owned and operated system. Do not be confused by phrases such as stock owned by private banks. This is a often misunderstood part of the system. Private banks are required by law to own the stock as a means to reserve capital for the banking system so the private banks cannot simply lend out all of their own private capital. Things have changed over time so there are even more restraints on bank capital. Go back to your own links that you posted and read them with a bit of a critical eye in light of what I have stated.

I may be closer to your political philosophy than you think, but we cannot let such beliefs ignore the facts around us. I am concerned about the effects of capital movement and how it changes the prospects locally for jobs and for compensation for those jobs. I am concerned about immigration and the short term effects on local jobs as well. But seriously, banks need a return on capital to reward investors, but there is always a danger of bank failure when over leveraged. This is why banks are regulated and the federally chartered banks are required to own 'stock' in the Federal Reserve System.

Over leveraged investments is akin to borrowing money from the mob to bet on roulette in Las Vegas. The mob will always be better at collecting the debt than you will be at winning from the mob at roulette. (for some reason I have a movie "Get Shorty" on my mind now, darn) Over leverage / Ponzi-like schemes are not sustainable. What you are seeing is indeed a problem and it may be that banks that pursue such policies are not sustainable. In the end it is the problem of investor expectations that drive poor unsustainable decisions and foolish management that never looks to the probable end result that is the problem. Yes too much debt is a part. Too little debt is probably also a problem if outside investors are to be attracted. In the end it is a balancing act and that is why ownership needs to be tied to good management.

I still think your fundamental premise in the first post is the assumption that a Ponzi-like scheme is not sustainable. I agree these schemes are not sustainable, but the solution is to avoid such schemes in the first place.