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Spanish Protests


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Don't know if anyone is aware of the protests that have been going on around Spain for nearly two weeks now.

You can read a bit of background here Spain reveals pain over cuts and unemployment | World news | guardian.co.uk

This morning in Barcelona the police went tried to move people out of the plaza where the protest has been happening here.

Here's a video. It's horrible.

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I'm amazed it's taken this long, with youth unemployment at 40%. Poor bastards.

I expect all of these troubled Eurozone countries to default and leave the Euro quite shortly. It's fucking ridiculous what's been imposed on them to keep the currency area intact.

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I don't come out with these things lightly but I have to say FUCKING PIGS. I saw first hand the 'no nonsense approach' of the Spanish Police when I was over in Madrid for the Dons game in 07. On that occasion it was in response to an Aberdeen casual giving them verbal abuse as he walked past them so it was quite funny to see them batter him in the legs

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Given that nearly all of Spain's, and indeed the world's economic problems can be ascribed to Keynes and his acolytes, it's probably time for them to try something different.

Not sure that Keynes was an advocate of a fixed exchange rate, was a bit down on the Gold standard, IIRC. Likewise, Spain (and the others) can't get out of this until they devalue and regain competitive advantage against the North.

Though I agree, what we regard as 'Keynesianism' in this day and age is a complete embarrassment to the profession of economics.

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What is now regarded as Keynesian economics isn't really Keynesian economics in my mind. They abandoned much of his market structure/cycle theories in the mid 70s, and now that we're in the shit, they've used the real Keynesian postulates in trying to turn things around. There were obviously many aspects of Keynesian economics in policy making decisions, as it is the backbone of all capitalist policy making, so in that respect you are right. In that sense, "trying something different" could mean neglecting capitalism all together (is that what you mean?). I don't think that's a downright bad idea, anyway! Digression aside, I think the correct utilisation of Keynesian (John Maynard) economics is the way forward for capitalist society. There are so many other considerations now however. The power of oil, for instance, could change the applicability of Keynesian thinking, but its hard to say. Basically, I might be completely off here! But this is my understanding of it.

keynes.png

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Yeah, it's neo-classical economics or neo-liberalism, monetarism, call it what you will. We abandoned Keynes in the '70s. Forget Hayek or Keynes, it's Friedman that rules our world.

Apparently, we still call it Keynesianism when we decide to chuck a lot of money at a problem. In essence, we are trying to treat a problem of insolvency as if it were a problem of liquidity. The diagnosis is simply incorrect and therefore the treatment will likely fail unless it is coincidently appropriate for the correct ailment, which I very much doubt.

Assuming that a capitalist system will never misallocate credit or misvalue equity is unbelievably dense. Neither does it mean we should abandon the powerful motive force of capitalism, just that we need to recognise it is flawed and debt repudiation is sometimes the only way out, whether that be by the soft default of currency devaluation or a hard default, or haircut.

And in the case of Spain, they are simply too economically divergent to share a currency with Germany, as are we.

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In that sense, "trying something different" could mean neglecting capitalism all together (is that what you mean?).

I'm sure that's what Dave meant.

Snide remarks aside, I have no fucking idea what any of you are talking about. Fuck the Police.

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You could argue that Friedman and other Chicagan's led to the recent failures of capitalism, particularly in advocating free markets. Really, its the idiots in charge, but the Chicago paradigm outlined their policies. If you look back 10-15 years, the extent of this recession could have been predicted (its the "business cycle"). This accounts for the exponential growth in population, which governments around the world completely neglected to consider. As I said, the power of the oil industry has taken much of the power away from governmental policy making also.

You're pretty much spot on though. Joseph Schumpeter predicted the shortfalls of capitalism pretty accurately in my opinion; more so than Marx. The sooner Keynesian thinking can be adapted to contemporary economics, the sooner we can all move on. Although there are so many problems with it, which you summed up brilliantly, I would still advocate Keynes if I were a political advisor, which I would obviously not be capable of anyway.

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Thanks! All credit is due to Steve Keen though, he's the only modern economist worth listening to, IMO, a student of Minsky's work, who himself was a student of Schumepter.

Basically, his central argument is that our economic growth has been based on private credit expansion for the last 30 odd years (actually now I recall he places the start of the problem in the '60s) and we have now hit a limit, and the monetarist solution of slashing rates will not work as no one is either willing or able to take on more debt.

I would say while oil is powerful, it is as nothing compared to the power of the Lords Of Finance. they really have us over a barrel (pun, lol)

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