Uavhengig sosialist: Økonomisk politikk

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torsdag 13. januar 2011

Nei til sal av Noreg!

Salet av til det statsåtte kinesiske selskapet China National Bluestar viser trongen for eit statleg eigarkapitalfond. Medan Kina bruker kapitalen sin til å kjøpe seg opp i strategiske industriverksemder, har finansielle investeringar teke over for industrireising her til lands. Tidlegare kunne ein ha stogga oppkjøp ved hjelp av ervervsloven, men EØS-avtalen kan som vanleg synt seg å vere ei hindring. Alf Holmelid (SV) er heldigvis på saka. LO støtter óg kravet. Kan hende til og med næringsministeren endeleg vaknar opp?

mandag 8. november 2010

Sosialdemokrati i krise?

Michael Lind om krisa for dei sosialdemokratiske partia (mine uthevingar):

"It would be a mistake to believe that the voters, in rejecting social democrats, are rejecting the middle-class welfare state that social democratic parties built in the 20th century. On the contrary, center-right parties like David Cameron’s Conservatives and the ruling Moderate party in Sweden have been forced to limit their libertarianism in order to win office.
The truth is that voters have not turned against the old-fashioned social democracy of the mid-20th century. In Europe as in the U.S., universal social insurance programs for the middle class, as opposed to means-tested welfare programs for the poor, remain popular among voters on the right as well as the left. Voters in Europe are not voting against public pensions and universal healthcare. Instead, they are tossing out a more recent generation of social democrats who went too far in their embrace of markets.

The greatest assault on traditional social democracy in the last generation has come from "Third Way" leaders of center-left parties like Tony Blair, and their continental European counterparts. Like the Clinton Democrats, these "modernizing" social democrats embraced free markets with a convert’s zeal, celebrating globalization and deregulating finance, while seeking to privatize or dismantle parts of the older welfare state. The politicians of the Third Way were far more libertarian than the voters in their own parties and their actions helped to make possible the global economic crisis.

Having given up traditional social democratic economics for a watered-down version of libertarian conservatism, the Third Way social democrats in Europe, like the Clinton and Obama Democrats in the U.S., sought to replace the traditional bread-and-butter concerns of working-class voters with idealistic campaigns about multiculturalism, climate change and obesity that appealed to more affluent, college-educated voters.

(...)

In general the parallels between the U.S. and Europe are striking. In the U.S., as in Europe, the right is divided between a pro-business right promoting policies of austerity and a populist, nativist right energized by opposition to immigration and multiculturalism, particularly where Muslims are involved. In the U.S., as in Europe, the upper-middle-class activists and intellectuals of the center-left devote far less energy to traditional social democratic issues like social insurance and the minimum wage than to non-economic causes like renewable energy, mass transit, the new urbanism, gay marriage, identity politics and promotion of amnesty for illegal immigrants. On both continents, conservatism is becoming more downscale while progressives are increasingly upmarket."

torsdag 28. oktober 2010

Néstor Kirchner

Foto: INyP

Néstor Kirchner: Argentina's independence hero:

"The sudden death of Néstor Kirchner is a great loss, not only to Argentina but to the region and the world. Kirchner took office as president in May 2003, when Argentina was in the initial stages of its recovery from a terrible recession. His role in rescuing Argentina's economy is comparable to that of Franklin D Roosevelt in the Great Depression of the United States. Like Roosevelt, Kirchner had to stand up both to powerful moneyed interests and to most of the economics profession, which was insisting that his policies would lead to disaster. They were proved wrong, and Kirchner right.
(...)
In September of 2003, the battle came to a head when Kirchner temporarily defaulted to the IMF rather than accept its conditions. This was an extraordinarily gutsy move – no middle-income country had ever defaulted to the IMF; only a handful of failed or pariah states like Iraq or Congo. That's because the IMF was seen as having the power to cut off even trade credits to a country that defaulted to them.
No one knew for sure what would happen. But the IMF backed down and rolled over the loans. Argentina went on to grow at an average of more than 8% annually through 2008, pulling more than 11 million people, in a country of 40 million, out of poverty. The policies of the Kirchner government, including the central bank targeting of a stable and competitive real exchange rate, and taking a hard line against the defaulted creditors – were not popular in Washington or among the business press. But they worked.

(...)

Kirchner also earned respect from human rights organisations for his willingness to prosecute and extradite some of the military officers accused of crimes against humanity during the 1976-1983 dictatorship – reversing the policies of previous governments. Together with his wife, current president Cristina Fernández, Néstor Kirchner made an enormous contribution in helping to move Argentina and the region in a progressive direction. These efforts have not generally won him much favour in Washington and in international business circles, but history will record him not only as a great president but also as an independence hero of Latin America."

torsdag 19. november 2009

Interessant om Kina

"In the United States, there is a widely shared perception that China has abandoned socialism and that it has become a Wild West-style, capitalist free-for-all. That's wrong. True, US multinationals, among others, are sidling up cheek by jowl to invest and build factories in China, both for export and to supply China's 1.3 billion consumers. (More than a hundred US Fortune 500 companies operate in Chongqinq already, including Hewlett-Packard, whose laptop assembly plant here will produce 10 million computers a year, Chongqing officials say.) But the fact remains that in China, all of the key industries are government-owned: banks, energy, oil, transport, telecommunications (including China's huge cell phone company, which will soon have its 500 millionth subscriber). China's banking system – which includes four or five giant national banks, 17 mid-sized commercial banks, and about 140 city commercial banks – sailed serenely through the worldwide crisis of 2008-2009. Virtually none of it was exposed to the bad debt and high-flying securities speculation bubble that collapsed AIG, Lehman, and countless other players."

Chongqing: Socialism in One City