Trump forms a Wall Street government to attack health care and workers’ rights

Patrick Martin

Major US newspapers reported Tuesday night that President-elect Donald Trump has selected Steven T. Mnuchin, a former Wall Street banker who served as Trump’s campaign finance chairman, to be the next secretary of the treasury, the most influential cabinet position in terms of economic policy and the jobs and living standards of working people. The appointment is to be formally unveiled on Wednesday.

This follows Trump’s appointment of Representative Tom Price of Georgia, a leading right-wing Republican and opponent of Medicare, to head the Department of Health and Human Services. This department oversees Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which account for the vast bulk of domestic social spending by the federal government.

There were also press reports that the much-rumored nomination of billionaire speculator Wilbur Ross as secretary of commerce would be announced shortly, and that Elaine Chao, the wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and a cabinet member in the George W. Bush administration, would be named as secretary of transportation.

Trump has already named another billionaire, school privatization advocate Betsy DeVos, wife of Amway heir Dick DeVos, to be secretary of education.

With these appointments, the general outlines of the new administration’s domestic policies are clear. Far from Trump’s demagogic claims that he would “drain the swamp,” the corrupt nexus between Wall Street and Washington is tighter than ever.

In many ways, the Trump administration represents the fusion between the two, with prominent members of the financial aristocracy, including three of the 500 or so US billionaires—Trump, Ross and DeVos—taking leading positions in the nation’s capital.

Every non-billionaire cabinet appointment announced by Trump is a millionaire or multi-millionaire. These include Senator Jeff Sessions, Representative Tom Price, Elaine Chao and, of course, Mnuchin, a former partner at Goldman Sachs worth upwards of $50 million.

Mnuchin is not the first Goldman Sachs veteran—and campaign insider—that Trump has named to a top position. Stephen Bannon, the campaign CEO and former head of the ultra-right Breitbart News, may be said to represent the fascist wing of Wall Street, while Mnuchin represents its more conventional establishment wing.

In selecting a Goldman Sachs alumnus to head the Treasury, Trump is following the example of George W. Bush, who appointed Henry Paulson, and Bill Clinton, who appointed Robert Rubin. Mnuchin’s father and brother had long careers at the firm, but Mnuchin left soon after becoming a partner, first working for billionaire George Soros (a prominent Clinton backer in 2016), then going west to make millions as a Hollywood financier, backing some highly profitable action films, including the X-Men franchise, as well as Avatar, Gravity and the execrable American Sniper .

One of his more controversial financial operations on the West Coast involved the takeover of the failed California mortgage lender IndyMac in 2009. He headed a group that bought IndyMac from government receivers, renamed it OneWest, pushed ruthlessly to foreclose on borrowers, and so improved the balance sheet that he sold the company to CIT in 2014 for more than twice the purchase price. Fair housing groups filed discrimination charges against OneWest for refusing to lend or refinance in certain minority areas.

When Mnuchin agreed last summer to head Trump’s fund-raising operation, he was widely criticized in Hollywood and Wall Street circles, which largely backed Democrat Hillary Clinton. Mnuchin himself had donated mainly to Democratic candidates, but knew Trump from previous business dealings. As he told Bloomberg Businessweek at the time, “Nobody’s going to be, like, ‘Well, why did he do this?’ if I end up in the administration.”

It is a virtual certainty that a Mnuchin Treasury will scrap the pretense of regulating Wall Street that was mounted by the Obama administration and the Democrats through passage of the 2010 Dodd-Frank banking bill. The only institutional change accomplished by Dodd-Frank, and a minor one, the establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is likely to be reversed.

While the Trump administration gives Wall Street free rein, it will deepen the attacks on health care for working people that have already reached a new level under the Obama administration. This is the significance of the nomination of Representative Price as secretary of health and human services.

As one headline put it, “Gutting Obamacare might be the least controversial part of Tom Price’s health care agenda.” A former orthopedic surgeon and six-term House member from the same wealthy Atlanta suburbs that elected Newt Gingrich, Price favors a completely market-based health care system, in which no one would be “entitled” to health care unless he or she had the money to pay for it, perhaps with the aid of a totally inadequate government voucher.

Like Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, a close ally whom he succeeded as chairman of the House Budget Committee, Price seeks to take advantage of the unpopular and reactionary character of Obamacare to launch a frontal assault on all federal health care programs, particularly Medicare and Medicaid, which underwrite health care for 130 million people, including the elderly, the poor and those suffering from the worst illnesses.

Under a program that the Republican-controlled Congress would likely enact, Trump would sign into law, and Price would administer, Medicaid would be ended as a federal entitlement program and transformed into separate block grants for each of the 50 states, which would be entirely free to reduce benefits and standards. Medicare would become a voucher program, similar to the Health Savings Accounts offered by many employers, with the federal contribution to purchase private insurance limited to a maximum of $3,000, leaving the bulk of the cost of health care to fall on the elderly.

Planned Parenthood, women’s rights groups, and gay and lesbian groups all denounced the Price nomination as a signal of the reactionary direction of the Trump administration, warning that it proposed to go back decades, or even half a century, in terms of family planning, abortion rights and other social issues.

Price is an adamant opponent of abortion under all circumstances. He introduced legislation to defund Planned Parenthood programs and as well as a constitutional amendment to outlaw gay marriage. According to one report, he was so hostile to the idea that some women require financial assistance to pay for birth control that he challenged a reporter to “bring me one woman” who struggled to afford contraception.

He will be in charge of a department that sets policy on issues such as who can receive survivor’s benefits under Social Security, whether drugs like Plan B can be sold over the counter, and whether health insurance policies should cover birth control and abortion services.

These cabinet selections demonstrate the absurdity of all attempts by the Democrats to paint Trump in positive colors. This is to be a government of reaction all down the line, from extreme militarism in foreign policy to vicious attacks on jobs, living standards, social programs and democratic rights at home.

The two-faced character of the Democratic response to Trump was typified in comments by incoming Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer. He denounced the naming of Representative Price to run Health and Human Services, saying Price “has proven to be far out of the mainstream of what Americans want when it comes to Medicare, the Affordable Care Act and Planned Parenthood.” At the same time, he hailed the selection of Elaine Chao to run the Department of Transportation, praising her “long history of service to our country.”

Schumer added, “Senate Democrats have said that if President-elect Trump is serious about a major infrastructure bill, backed by real dollars and not just tax credits and without cutting other programs like health care and education, that we are ready to work with his administration.” Actually, the Democrats are ready to work with Trump under all circumstances, and if they cannot find anything “positive” to support, they will invent something.

How I Produce Fake News for Russia

David Swanson

Apparently I’ve written “fake news” on behalf of Russia without ever receiving a dime from Russia or realizing what I was doing. It took the intrepid reporting of the Washington Post to alert me to what I have been engaged in. My “fake news” has been published in at least 18 Russian propaganda outlets included on the Washington Post-endorsed Enemies List.

They are ahtribune.com, off-guardian.org, opednews.com, antiwar.com, beforeitsnews.com, blackagendareport.com, ronpaulinstitute.org, rt.com (that one is actually Russian), consortiumnews.com, countercurrents.org, counterpunch.org, globalresearch.ca, truth-out.org, truthdig.com, informationclearinghouse.info, washingtonsblog.com, mintpressnews.com, and nakedcapitalism.com.

Since everything I write is also at davidswanson.org it’s a safe bet that that’s a Russian propaganda site as well, even though I hadn’t realized it.

In all seriousness, there is very likely Russian propaganda to be found somewhere, since Russia tried to hire me a-year-and-a-half ago to produce it. I turned them down and blogged about their offer. Quite likely not everyone turns them down. But even voter fraud or intelligent Washington Post articles can be found eventually if you look hard enough.

I have also turned down all invitations to conferences in Russia, due to colleagues’ fears of false accusations that it turns out arrive anyway. I have also repeatedly gone on Russian media and denounced actions by the Russian government, due to the fact that that was what I thought of those actions.

And yet somehow I’ve produced a veritable flood of Russian propaganda, most of it not even mentioning Russia at all. I’ve given some thought to how this has happened. Here’s my best explanation:

I sit in front of my computer. I think about the world. I move my fingers in such a manner that words appear on the screen.

Does that help explain it?

Here, I’ll demonstrate:

It is my belief that the president of the United States is Barack Obama. If this is true, then blaming a pipeline in North Dakota on Donald Trump is a chronological error. Admitting that bizarre error doesn’t make Trump one iota less racist or sexist or authoritarian, since it’s a statement about a completely different topic.

It is my belief that any thaw in the new U.S.-Russian Cold War created by the Obama regime will be a good thing, above all because a nuclear holocaust would be horrible. Agreeing with this does not guarantee that Trump will bring it about. Nor does it suggest that Vladimir Putin is a saintly humanitarian. Nor does it constitute a claim that all U.S. presidents should be white males. This is because it is a comment about a completely different topic from those ones.

It is my belief that dozens of things went wrong with the recent U.S. election, none of which eliminate any of the others. Here is a partial list.

The Democratic Party stacked the primary against its politically and morally superior candidate — in ways that we always knew, ways that we know now, and in other ways that many of us suspect.

The propaganda-free U.S. Corporate Media of Freedom stacked the Republican primary against anyone other than Donald Trump by giving Trump billions of dollars worth of free air time.

The Republican governments of several swing states stripped 7 million disproportionately racial minority voters from the voting rolls.

Donald Trump encouraged voter intimidation.

States provided too few voting machines in racial minority precincts.

Prisoners and felons were stripped of their voting rights.

Residents of U.S. territories were not allowed to vote.

The popular vote winner was denied the win.

Congress was determined largely by gerrymandering.

Winner-take-all systems without ranked-choice voting blocked options.

Votes were counted on unverifiable machines that produced the usual suspicious red shift away from exit-poll results.

The media and the presidential debates “commission” shut out candidates, views, and useful questions.

There was no serious reporting on what the candidates would do if elected about climate change, military spending, wars, or poverty.

Serious scandals were passed over in favor of obsessing with lesser scandals.

Among serious scandals that were passed over I would include near the top of the list: Hillary Clinton took money into her family foundation from foreign governments and weapons makers, and then supported weapons sales from those companies to those governments, resulting in massive death and destruction.

Among serious scandals that were passed over I would also include near the top of the list: Donald Trump encouraged racism, bigotry, hatred, and violence, and threatened to “kill families” in wars aimed at “stealing oil.”

Among the lesser scandals that ate up air time, I would put near the bottom: Without any proof, Trump was accused of being an agent of Russia, and Russia was accused of interfering in the election.

Tokenism was, once again, promoted as meaningful.

I believe that every population that has U.S. troops on or within its borders should have a vote in the U.S. presidential election. When Russians or anyone else in the world are pleased by the outcome, I take that to be a good thing. My taking that to be a good thing does not erase any negative aspects of that outcome, because one thing is not identical to lots of other things.

Why did people vote for Trump? For the most part they did not. He got fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, who herself got fewer votes than either of the two candidates in recent U.S. presidential elections. But some voted for Trump for the same reason they backed Bernie Sanders: they wanted to reject the establishment, no matter what form that rejection took. Some voted for him because they bought into his racism, bigotry, and scapegoating. Some simply couldn’t stomach any more Clintons. Some wouldn’t vote for a woman. Some mistakenly believed that Trump would help them. But these groups overlap, as do these reasons.

Why is it acceptable in the United States to make fun of poor white people, to mock their speech and their dentistry, to condemn them in ways that are simply forbidden with other groups? Why is there no Trailer Park Studies Department? Why does the very idea sound ludicrous, while ethnic studies departments of all non-white varieties are very serious institutions? One justification for this is that poor rural white people are racist, and that it is perfectly fine to be cruel to racists. That is simply false and horribly misguided; it is not simply fine to be cruel to anyone. And that fact does not mean that racism and sexism are acceptable, because that would be a completely different claim.

A vicious cycle can be produced in which people who perceive anti-racist and anti-sexist campaigns as directed against them consequently embrace their racism more strongly, resulting in more opposition to their racism and to them. This can be compounded by the usual delusions to the effect that government assistance hurts people, while tax cuts for billionaires help people. This can be reinforced by systems of government assistance that do not benefit everyone, as would a basic income, or single-payer healthcare, or free college, or free job training, or guaranteed vacation, or sustainable infrastructure, instead of systems designed merely to aid and stigmatize the very poorest.

Recognizing the blind spots of identity politics or the madness of the new McCarthyism do not mean that election results are always all to be blamed on liberals, since that conclusion would require erasing numerous other problems listed above.

Imagining that elections carry as much or more importance than building a nonviolent movement for revolutionary change is a deep mistake made by most people on earth, including in Russia.

‘The Coral Was Cooked’: 2016 Deadliest Year On Record For Great Barrier Reef

 Nika Knight

The Great Barrier Reef suffered through the worst coral die-off in recorded history this year, scientists found, with unusually warm ocean water and record-setting bleaching events killing a stunning 90 percent of all coral in the worst-hit area.

Those were the conclusions of a study published Monday by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.

“One of the worst-hit areas is around Lizard Island in Far North Queensland, where around 90 percent of the coral has died,” reports the BBC. “Dr. Andrew Hoey, whose team charted the area, said the impact was far worse than feared after an initial survey in April.”

“It’s devastating to get in the water somewhere you’ve been coming for almost 20 years, and it’s just knocked it on its head,” Hoey told the BBC. “There’s very little coral cover left there. It was dominated by the acropora—the branching corals—but we lost most of them.”

The BBC reports on what caused the mass coral death:

In February, March and April, sea surface temperatures across the Great Barrier Reef were the hottest on record, at least 1ºC higher than the monthly average.

“Some of the initial mortality was down to heat stress,” said study leader Professor Terry Hughes.

“The coral was cooked.”

Far more has been lost through gradual starvation, after the coral expelled the colourful algae zooxanthella, which turns sunlight into food.

This is what leads to the white, skeletal appearance of the coral, which is left without its main source of energy.

The study also found that the coral which survived the bleaching have now come under greater threat from predators such as snails and crown of thorns starfish.

However, researchers also discovered that corals in the southern areas of the Great Barrier Reef fared better, with the central region of the reef showing only six percent of corals dying off.

“The good news is the southern two-thirds of the Reef has escaped with minor damage. On average, six percent of bleached corals died in the central region in 2016, and only one percent in the south. The corals have now regained their vibrant color, and these reefs are in good condition,” said Professor Andrew Baird of the ARC Centre, who took part in the research.

For the dead coral in the Great Barrier Reef’s northern region, though, recovery seems a dubious prospect, as climate change appears to only be accelerating.

“The trajectory is not good,” Dr. Anne Hogget, a scientist who works at a research station on Lizard Island, told the BBC. “We keep pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and this happened absolutely because of that.”

What Has Neoliberal Capitalism Ever Done For India?

Colin Todhunter

When India ushered in neoliberal economic reforms during the early 1990s, the promise was job creation, inclusive growth and prosperity for all. But, some 25 years later, what we have seen is almost 400,000 farmers committing suicide, one of the greatest levels of inequality out of all ‘emerging’ economies, a trend towards jobless ‘growth’, an accelerating and massive illegal outflow of wealth by the rich, and, as if that were not enough, now we have the sequestration of ordinary people’s money under the euphemism ‘demonetization’.

Data from the Multi-dimensional Poverty Index indicates that 20 years ago, India had the second-best social indicators among the six South Asian countries (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan), but now it has the second worst position, ahead only of Pakistan. Bangladesh has less than half of India’s per-capita GDP but has infant and child mortality rates lower than that of India.

The neoliberal model of development has moreover arguably seen the poverty alleviation rate in India remain around the same as it was back  pre-independent India, while the ratio between the top and bottom ten percent of the population has doubled since 1991. According to the Organisation for Co-operation and Economic Development, this doubling of income inequality has made India one of the worst performers in the category of emerging economies.

Neoliberalism in India has been underpinned by unconstitutional land takeovers and population displacement, with the state using military and para-military forces in the process alongside the suspension of various democratic rights and the wide scale abuse of human rights. For supporters of cronyism, cartels and the monopolization of markets by private interests, which to all extents and purposes is what neoliberalism thrives on in India (and elsewhere), there have been untold opportunities for well-placed individuals to make an under-the-table fast buck from various infrastructure projects and privatisation sell offs.

But PM Modi interprets all of this in a different way, which comes as little surprise, given harsh the reality – not the media misrepresentations – of what he ‘achieved’ in Gujarat as Chief Minister. He recently stated that India is now one of the most business-friendly countries in the world. The code for being ‘business friendly’ translates into a willingness by the government to facilitate much of what is outlined above, while reducing taxes and tariffs and allowing the acquisition of public assets via privatisation as well as instituting policy frameworks that work to the advantage of foreign corporations.

In agriculture, for instance, we are seeing the displacement of a pre-existing productive system. Small and medium-sized enterprises are obliged to produce for global entities, state enterprises are being run down or (semi)privatised and independent agricultural producers are impoverished. The tragedy is that model that is intended to supplant the existing one is based on Cargill/Monsanto’s environment- and livelihood-destroying business models for corporate profit which have become synonymous with the ‘national interest’.

Unfortunately, people like Aruna Rodrigues and Vandana Shiva and certain NGOs who criticise this and offer credible alternatives are regarded by elements of the state as either working against the interest of the nation or colluding with ‘foreign interests’ – when the reality is that the state is doing exactly that!

Seeds, mountains, water, forests and biodiversity are being sold off. The farmers and tribals are being sold out. And the more that gets sold off, the more who get sold out, the greater the amount of cash and credit goes into corporate accounts and the easier it is for the misinformed to swallow the lie of ‘growth’. As the state abdicates it redistributive role and facilitates the World Bank’s agenda, India is suddenly labelled capitalism’s ‘economic miracle’.

The opening up of India to foreign capital is supported by rhetoric about increasing efficiency, job creation and boosting growth. According to the neoliberal ideologues, foreign investment is good for jobs and good for business. But just how many jobs actually get created is another matter, as is the amount of jobs destroyed in the first place to pave the way for the entry of foreign corporations.

For example, Cargill sets up a food or seed processing plant that employs a few hundred people, but what about the agricultural jobs that were deliberately eradicated in the first place or the village-level processors who were cynically put out of business so Cargill could gain a financially lucrative foothold? Hundreds of millions of livelihoods are in danger as foreign corporations and capital smells massive profits on the back of the World Bank-backed commercialisation of rural India

India’s much-lauded economic growth in recent times has been built on consumer and corporate debt. Corporate subsidies and (real estate) investment bubbles have given the impression of economic prosperity. And it is merely an ‘impression’. For instance, consider the amount of tax breaks and handouts given to the corporate sector and what little it has achieved in return in terms of jobs or exports. And consider too the massive amount of corporate debt written off by state-owned banks, while farmers kill themselves en masse because of debt, partly due to Monsanto’s capture of the cotton sector and partly because of economic liberalisation and increasing exposure to rigged markets courtesy of the WTO.

And so to the latest heist – ‘demonetization’. According to Binu Mathew, banks in India were facing a liquidity crisis and parts of the debt-inflated economy were in danger of imploding. In this respect, Modi’s outlawing of almost 90% of India’s cash notes overnight is basically a bail-out/windfall for the corporate elites/real estate speculators.

This tactic neatly removed the danger of creating inflation by merely printing money. You can forget about Western-style bank bailouts and subsequent ‘austerity’, the Indian government decided to sequester the public’s money directly in an attempt to keep the neoliberal crony capitalism ponzi scheme on course.

As Mathew says:
“The banks will lend out the money ‘confiscated from you’. Who will benefit? Not the poor farmers who are committing by their thousands every month. Not the children who are dying of malnutrition in several parts of the country. Not the small manufacturers who are struggling to keep up their businesses? Who will benefit? The crony capitalists that props up the Modi regime. This demonetization is the biggest crony capitalist neo-liberalist coup that has ever taken place in India. Never doubt it, India will have to pay a heavy price for it.”

As in the US, the undermining of a productive economic base – in India’s case, a failure to boost industrial manufacturing performance and jobs and pumping up the economy with credit, while at the same time dismantling its greatest asset – the agrarian base – can only lead to a dead-end. Courtesy of its compliant politicians, India has hitched a ride aboard the wholly corrupt neoliberal bandwagon to nowhere.

Warning Of Global Havoc As Possible Arctic ‘Tipping Points’ Pile Up

 Jon Queally

What is happening in the Arctic will not stay in the Arctic.

In an ominous (though not hopeless) report published Friday, researchers warn that as many as 19 various ‘tipping points’ could be triggered by the increasingly warm temperatures in the world’s northern polar region.

The Arctic Resilience Report, produced under the auspices of the Arctic Council by an international team of researchers from multiple institutes and universities, is the first comprehensive assessment of its kind, looking at the unique region from a combined social and ecological perspective. By surveying and synthesizing a large body of previous research on how both communities and natural systems are responding to global warming, the report offers a worrying conclusion.

“The warning signals are getting louder,” Marcus Carson of the Stockholm Environment Institute and one of the lead authors of the new report, told the Guardian. “[These developments] also make the potential for triggering [tipping points] and feedback loops much larger.”

The signs of dramatic change, the researchers found, are everywhere in the Arctic. “Temperatures nearly 20°C above the seasonal average are being registered over the Arctic Ocean,” the report states. “Summer sea-ice cover has hit new record lows several times in the past decade. Infrastructure built on permafrost is sinking as the ground thaws underneath.”

The fear of tipping points—which occur when natural systems hit limits that force dramatic, cascading, and often irreversible changes—have long been held among scientists studying the dynamic impacts of human-caused global warming and climate change. Referred to as “regime shifts” in the report, the concept is the same.

“One of the study’s most important findings is that not only are regime shifts occurring, but there is a real risk that one regime shift could trigger others, or simultaneous regime shifts could have unexpected effects,” said Johan L. Kuylenstierna, executive director of the Stockholm Environment Institute, which contributed to the study.

Johan Rockström, executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre and co-chair of the project, added: “How regime shifts interact with one another is poorly understood. If multiple regime shifts reinforce each other, the results could be potentially catastrophic. The variety of effects that we could see means that Arctic people and policies must prepare for surprise. We also expect that some of those changes will destabilize the regional and global climate, with potentially major impacts.”

What the scientists observed in their research, according to a summary of the report, were “large, persistent, often abrupt changes in the Arctic’s natural systems” which they came to classify as regime shifts. The report explains how “these shifts are having large impacts on wildlife, the stability of the climate, and on Arctic peoples’ sense of place and well-being.” The 19 specific shifts identified take many forms, including:

• Loss of Arctic sea ice
• Collapse of the Greenland ice sheet
• Ocean hypoxia
• Collapse of fisheries
• Transformation of landscapes: from bogs to peatlands; from tundra to boreal forest or steppe
• Shifting river channels.

Citing these and other worrying trends, the report, like so many others coming from the scientific community in recent years, urges immediate action by both regional interests and the world community. “The potential effects of Arctic regime shifts [or tipping points] on the rest of the world are substantial, yet poorly understood,” the report states. “Human-driven climate change greatly increases the risk of Arctic regime shifts, so reducing global greenhouse gas emissions is crucial to reducing this risk.”

With a focus on resiliency and community-led response, the report says that reducing the risks of further destruction and destabilization in the Arctic, especially given the region’s crucial role in regulating the planet’s climate, depends on global action driven by local concerns and knowledge.

The hope, according to the scientists involved, is that efforts to stem the damage in the Arctic can also provide guidance for the rest of the world.

“How we manage and respond to the rapid changes in the Arctic,” the researchers suggest, “could be a blueprint for how we meet future climate challenges.”

Deepening social crisis underpins South Korean protests

Ben McGrath

Over the past five weeks, millions of people have poured onto the streets in South Korea to demand the resignation or impeachment of President Park Geun-hye over a scandal involving her longtime confidante Choi Soon-sil. Choi, with the aid of presidential secretaries, has been accused of creating a slush fund for Park, as well as taking part in deciding policy matters despite holding no governmental office.

The crisis reflects deep divisions within the political establishment, including Park’s ruling Saenuri Party, opened up by the worsening global economic slump and rising geopolitical tensions. For those taking part in the protests, however, the hostility to Park is being fuelled not only by the various allegations of corruption but more broadly by her administration’s sustained attack on working and living conditions.

The crisis of global capitalism has gripped South Korea no less than other countries. Last quarter, the economy grew by just 0.7 percent. The Bank of Korea is predicting that growth this year will reach only 2.7 percent and 2.8 percent next year. Exports fell to 3.2 percent in October from a year ago, generating worry in business circles. Exports to China, South Korea’s largest trading partner, have declined for 16 consecutive months. These trends are a far cry from the economic expansion South Korea once enjoyed as one of the supposed Asian “miracles” with annual growth rates of over 10 percent.

That high growth was extracted through the extreme exploitation of workers under the former military dictatorship. As workers fought back, the political establishment turned to so-called democrats like Kim Dae-jung to further their agenda. Since the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-1998 both the democrats and conservatives have privatized national industries, leading to massive job losses, and casualized the labor force, turning positions into low-paid, part-time jobs.

Big business has been demanding deeper inroads into the social position of the working class, particularly greater “labor flexibility”—that is, the ability to fire workers and slash wages without restriction. However, the Park administration has been unable to force through her plans for this so-called labor reform.

At a recent event hosted by the Korea Economic Research Institute and the Korea Economic Association, participants attacked workers for “low productivity” and resort to strike action. “In the South Korean labor market, which is characterized by the lack of ease of employment and dismissal, some militant labor unions are engaged in irrational labor movements these days to affect the majority of workers,” said Jo Jang-ok, head of the Korea Economic Association.

For the working class, though, conditions are becoming unbearable. In the struggling shipbuilding industries, massive job cuts are underway. At the three largest manufacturers, Hyundai Heavy Industries, Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering and Samsung Heavy Industries, 20,000 jobs have already been slashed as the companies undergo restructuring. An additional 20,000 workers are expected to be sacked by the end of the year. At the same time, the government is planning to bail out the companies to the tune of $9.6 billion through 2020.

While the so-called militant unions in the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) have staged some token strikes, in reality they have accepted the job cuts, with unions at smaller shipbuilders being in “harmony mood” with the companies.

Last month the unemployment rate reached 3.4 percent, according to Statistics Korea. For young people, the rate was 8.5 percent. However, the statistics do not take into account those who have stopped looking for work or are underemployed in part-time positions. The total real unemployment rate is likely around 10 percent, while according to Lee Jun-hyup of the Hyundai Research Institute, one in three young people aged 15-29 can be considered unemployed.

South Korean students spend long hours studying to enter top universities in the hope of finding employment after graduating, only to face a dwindling job market. There are 653,000 people currently preparing for jobs, the highest number ever. They are not counted among the unemployed, but are working toward passing exams or gaining additional licenses and certificates to improve their chances of finding a job.

Many students have expressed anger toward Park and Choi, who used her connections with the government to secure placement for her daughter at the Ewha Womans University, one of the country’s top institutions. For working class students, entry to these elite schools is already barred by high tuition fees and the cost of after-school academies and tutors necessary to pass the entry exams.

The top-ranking Seoul National University (SNU) has witnessed a sharp decline in the number of students accepted from regular high schools, that is, those without special or elite status. The proportion of SNU students from these schools fell from 56.43 percent in 2010 to 42.5 percent in 2014.

In 2012, only 1 percent of students from the lowest-income bracket were enrolled at elite schools like SNU, Yonsei University, Korea University and Ewha Womans University. The average for all four-year universities was 3.2 percent.

For working families, education is just one major cost driving up household debt, which reached an historic high of $1.1 trillion at the end of June, and is still growing. Housing under South Korea’s rental system demands people take out large loans nearly equal to the value of an apartment. While the government plans to implement a debt service ratio indicator to protect banks, as interest rates are likely to rise, households will be left on their own.

People are also increasingly cancelling installment savings accounts before reaching maturity as they can no longer afford to put money aside for the future. In September, cancellation of these savings accounts at six major banks stood at 45.2 percent, up 2.6 percentage points from the previous year.

“Installment savings accounts are the last bastion of protection and people tend to hold them until the last minute,” a bank official told the Korea Times. “The rise in the early cancellation rate can be seen as an indication that households are facing more difficult financial situations.”

Poverty is widespread, particularly among the elderly. In February, the Korea Herald cited a Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs report which found that poverty rates were rising for households with breadwinners aged 34 or under, and with breadwinners over 65. For the elderly, the rate increased from 63.1 percent in 2006 to 63.8 percent in 2014—the highest of any advanced industrialised country.

None of the establishment parties has any answers to this deep social and economic crisis. The main opposition Minjoo (Democratic) Party of Korea, the People’s Party, and the Justice Party are all directing the public’s anger toward Park in the hopes of boosting their chances in next year’s presidential election. This includes their supporters in labor unions like the KCTU. Their denunciations of Park are to obscure the fact that the current conditions in South Korea are not the product of a single corrupt leader, but of the bankrupt capitalist system.

Colombian government signs revised peace deal with FARC

Andrea Lobo 

The Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas celebrated a new peace accord last Thursday in a sober ceremony in the capital, Bogotá. President Juan Manuel Santos’s promises that the culmination of the five-year peace talks will bring the country “progress, wellbeing, peace and concord” have already been discarded as frauds by a majority of the population.

On October 2, a previous and only slightly different peace agreement was narrowly voted down in a national referendum, with 19 percent of the total electorate voting against it and 63 percent abstaining.

The Colombian far right, dominated by ex-president Álvaro Uribe, has been strengthened as the most organized and intransigent opposition to the accord, saying that the new document remained virtually unchanged. “What will we tell the 3,5000 criminal organizations?” he asked, calling the agreement, “the worst example for the future of the country.”

Throughout his decades in positions of power, Uribe has defended the interests of the landed aristocracy that prefers to finish off or imprison the decimated FARC guerrillas, who today reportedly number 6,000, only a third of their strength under Uribe.

In spite of the continued opposition by the official “no” campaign, the FARC and the Santos administration decided to go ahead with the ceremony, hoping that “the process of consultation will be approved through the course of the next week” in Congress, where the ruling coalition holds a majority of the seats.

Recognizing that a popular vote could again reject the document, president Santos, who was awarded the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the peace talks, declared: “The most convenient and legitimate way to consult the new accord is through Congress. It is there that all laws of the Republic ought to be discussed and approved.”

Four days after the new agreement was initially reached two weeks ago, two FARC fighters were killed and one gave himself up to government armed forces, leading the government’s top negotiator, Humberto De la Calle, to warn that the ceasefire, “is indeed fragile!”

In spite of these expressions of concern and with a year left before the 2018 elections, the Liberal Party and the others in the ruling coalition are chiefly seeking to provide a political cover for the much more unpopular measures they will implement to deal with the country’s current budget crisis and economic stagnation. Since their beginning in 2012, the peace talks have been used as a smokescreen.

On the day before the ceremony, the Ministry of Economy presented the first stage of a regressive tax reform urged by the IMF and Wall Street credit agencies, increasing the added-value tax from 16 percent to 18 percent. Economy Minister Mauricio Cáceres reported on Thursday that the IMF was highly pleased with the proposal, and that it had demanded Congress approve it by the end of the year.

These short-term measures to deal with the current budget deficit will further undermine the country’s production and its limited reductions in poverty. Over the last decade, the oil reserves were severely depleted, allowing the country to grow at an average annual rate of over 5 percent. This, however, led to an increased dependence on oil exports and shrank the manufacturing sector and labor productivity, according to a 2015 study by the Levy Economics Institute, “Finance, Foreign Direct Investment, and Dutch Disease: The Case of Colombia.”

While this growth allowed for minimal assistance programs, a small financial elite in the country got obscenely rich, turning away investments from the real economy further.

The drop in oil and other commodity prices has contributed to a 35 percent drop in export earnings since June 2015, along with the widespread deterioration in agriculture and manufacturing caused by oil exploitation and the associated free trade agreements signed by Santos with the US, the European Union and others. Now, the government is struggling to deal with massive trade and accounts deficits and a crisis in public finances.

International heads of state and other top figures, who had been enthusiastic about the peace accord before the “no” vote, have supported the new agreement with sobriety and some reluctance. One of the main backers, US Secretary of State John Kerry, pledged support, while declaring, “After 52 years of war, no peace agreement can satisfy everyone in every detail.”

The London-based Financial Times expressed great skepticism about the new accord, predicting that Uribe’s party will gain strength and “have a strong footing from which to challenge for the presidency in the 2018 election.”

“Many Colombians feel hatred towards the FARC, viewing them as drug traffickers and human rights abusers,” adds the FT. Given the surprising referendum result, which demonstrated how useless the peace deal is to give legitimacy to the current administration’s attacks against social conditions, the dominant imperialist and national bourgeois forces in Colombia are pivoting towards Uribe’s bonapartist means of imposing the costs of public debt and economic stagnation onto Colombian workers and peasants.

Donald Trump’s election and the greater challenges posed to the Colombian economy by his proposed nationalist economic policies, along with likely higher interest rates, are also feeding into a greater support among the bourgeoisie for Uribe’s ultra-reactionary program, which includes massive tax cuts for the corporations and the rich, widespread social cuts and an escalation of the war against peasants to take their lands.

The anti-deal Uribistas are hopeful for a sharp change after Trump’s election. The Democratic Center senator, José Obdulio Gaviria, said that Marco Rubio, who is allegedly close to Uribe, will try to influence Trump in what he called “the new scenery of the anti-terrorist alliance.” Gaviria then hinted at the potential extradition of 50 FARC “narco-terrorists” with pending arrest warrants.

After Trump’s election, Álvaro Uribe was quite direct and tweeted, “Congratulations to President Trump; Colombia’s narco-terrorism and Venezuela’s tyranny are the greatest enemies of our democracy.”

During his speech on Thursday, the leader of the FARC, Rodrigo Londoño, also known as Timochenko, stated: “We welcome Donald Trump’s election as the new US president, and we hope that his administration can play a leading role in favor of world and continental peace.” So far, this is the most blatant demonstration of the political bankruptcy, subservience to imperialism and right-wing character of the FARC and the future, nominally left party it proposes to found.

The current situation of economic crisis and a strengthened far-right was prepared by all the previous governments together with the current administration, which sold out Colombia’s resources, attacked jobs and wages, exempted corporations from taxes and gave the military and paramilitary units a free rein to commit atrocities across the country. The widespread unpopularity of the current government has been severely increased due to their efforts to prop up the discredited leadership of the FARC as a left cover for the government.

Ultimately, both leading political factions of the Colombian ruling class, the center-right Santistas and the far-right Uribistas, agree on social austerity and cutting import tariffs and taxes for transnational corporations and banks that exploit the country’s resources and cheap labor. They also agree that if an incorporation of the guerrillas into official politics happens, the state will still move ahead with its plans to militarize the country and the region and to continue undermining democratic rights.

One of the more significant points of the new agreement will be its separation from the Constitution, giving flexibility for its implementation. Under a “Special Jurisdiction for Peace,” the accord also gives impunity to military and business elements that were involved in the conflict and leaves the option for FARC members accused of crimes to avoid sentences by making amends to the victims.

In terms of political participation, it still gives the FARC leaders and even those accused of war crimes party financing and a chance to run for public office, but it will eliminate the 10 automatic legislative seats that the previous agreement granted them. It also sets a six-month period for disarmament.

In terms of land grants, the accord reasserts the “current authority” and “constitutional rights” that protect the private property of the rural landowners. The agreement promises to use 3 million hectares for redistribution among landless peasants and war victims, under the cloak of “investments in the countryside with an entrepreneurial vision.”

Among the larger changes made in the revised, 310-page document is a further elaboration of the process of listing assets of the guerrillas that will be used for reparations, along with a detailed description of the “agricultural colonies” which are to serve as special prisons for the FARC members found guilty of crimes.

British government steps up attacks on state pensions

Danny Richardson & Robert Stevens

The ruling Conservatives are preparing the ground to scrap safeguards to the British state pension known as the “Triple Lock.”

The Triple Lock was introduced by the 2010 Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition under then Prime Minister David Cameron. It sees pensions rise in April of each year in line with one of three previously set criteria—a rise in inflation, an increase in average earnings or a set increase of 2.5 percent if the other two are less than this figure. Historically, pensions were linked to inflation rather than earnings, resulting in a steady decline of a state pension that was always set at a meagre amount.

A pro-austerity government was forced to adopt the Triple Lock under conditions of growing concern over pensioner poverty and the reliance of the Tories on an aging voter base. The lock was retained and formed part of the Conservative election manifesto for 2015, which promised to extend the Triple Lock until 2020.

Earlier this month, Parliament’s Work and Pensions Select Committee unanimously concluded that the retention of the Triple Lock, which it noted cost an additional £98 billion in the last tax year, was “unsustainable and unfair on younger families.” They advised the government to scrap the lock and tie any future increases to a single annual rises in average earnings.

The committee is chaired by right-wing Labour Party MP Frank Field. Labour has a further three members on the committee, the Conservatives six and the Scottish National Party one.

The attacks on pensioners are being cynically advanced as necessary in order to develop policies in support of “working families.” Field said the younger generation could not continue to support pensioners who have “fared relatively well in recent years.”

“They’ve accepted that unfairness so that we could largely eliminate pensioner poverty,” he asserted. “Fairness now means that the pendulum swings back in favour of working families, so they do not continue to have cuts—real cuts—in living standards, while we further advance the interests of pensioners.”

Baroness Lady Altmann, the Conservative peer and former pensions secretary, who previously worked with all three main political parties in the past on pensions issues, including the implementation of the Triple Lock, resigned within days of Theresa May taking over as prime minister from Cameron. In what was described by the media as “a secret memo”, she called for the Triple Lock to be scrapped. The memo stated that the pension guarantee had fulfilled its purpose and with the government moving to enforce Brexit, following June’s referendum vote to leave the EU, it would “not be affordable if the economy hits trouble.”

In reply, a government spokesman said it was still committed to the Triple Lock until at least 2020. However, under conditions of major economic crisis and dislocation as a result of Brexit, attacks on what remains of the social gains of the population will be intensified.

In his Autumn Statement, Chancellor Phillip Hammond said in relation to the state pension, “As we look ahead to the next parliament, we will need to ensure we tackle the challenges of rising longevity and fiscal sustainability.” While warning that cuts are on the agenda, Hammond maintained that pensions would be ring-fenced until 2020.

However, this is just for public consumption, with many indications that the government is preparing attacks on the state pension well ahead of that date.

On Sunday, Pensions Minister Damian Green refused to commit to the Triple Lock long-term. “We’ll need to see what happens to the economy between now and 2020, apart from anything else,” he told ITV’s Peston on Sunday .

Tory MP Stephen Crabb, another former work and pensions secretary, said last week, “What we need to spend the next three years doing is explaining very carefully what the fiscal impacts, the spending challenge will be arising from continuing with the triple lock throughout the next parliament and seeing whether actually we can achieve some kind of consensus in society about changing it.”

Crabb pointed out that lowering the increase of the Triple Lock to 1.5 percent would slash billions from the pension budget. The pensions bill accounts for £108 billion annually—around 42 percent of the welfare budget.

Other leading Tories promoting the ending of the Triple Lock include Iain Duncan Smith, a former party leader and former welfare secretary, and Lord Willetts.

On Monday, it emerged that the Department for Work and Pensions is seeking to significantly increase the age at which people are eligible for the state pension.

DWP documents suggest that people currently aged 22-30 would only qualify for a state pension at the age of 70. The document said a “more aggressive” timetable on the state pension age (SPA) was required. Even before such proposals, that would adversely affect millions of workers aged under 55, the SPA is due to rise to 66 between 2018 and 2020, to 67 between 2026 and 2028, and then to 68 between 2044 and 2046.

These attacks are being demanded by the media mouthpieces of the ruling elite. In an editorial, “Time to pick the triple lock on British pensions,” the Financial Times advised, “The best reform is probably to drop the 2.5 percent part of the lock.”

The implications for pensioners are disastrous if the recommendations of the Work and Pensions Select Committee are imposed. A report published by the Trades Union Congress in July of this year disclosed that between 2007 and 2015 real wages in the UK fell by 10.4 percent, a figure equalled only by Greece. If that fall in wages was the criteria used to compile pension increases—under the system recommended by the Works and Pensions Select Committee—pensioners would have gone without any rise in the last eight years.

The Age Concern charity rejected Altmann’s claim that the Triple Lock had served its purpose. Director Caroline Abrahams stated, “It is necessary to see the bigger picture, research shows that the state pension is still the largest source of income for most older people in the UK… 1.6 million older people still live in poverty in the UK.”

The claim that pensioners have been safeguarded at the expense of sections of workers is a fraud. Millions of pensioners still live in dire poverty. The Triple Lock does not apply to benefits relied on by an increasing number of pensioners: Pension Credit, Attendance Allowance or the winter fuel payment. In April this year, Age UK found that:

• One in seven pensioners (1.6 million or 14 percent) live in poverty, having incomes of less than 60 percent of median income after housing costs.

• A further 1.2 million pensioners have incomes just above the poverty line (more than 60 percent but less than 70 percent of median income).

Over the last decade, successive governments have impoverished millions of workers of all ages to impose the burden of the post-2008 bailout of the banks and super-rich on their shoulders. This has included robbing them of the hard-won rights to a decent pension and secure retirement. Last week, the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association reported that nearly 14 million workers are facing a shortfall in their retirement income.

In 2011, two million public-sector workers struck against government’s attack on their pensions. Within a few days of a mass demonstration in London most of the unions capitulated and every other union soon after.

In the steel industry, the unions have given away their members’ hard won pension entitlements as part of a package that included job losses and inferior working conditions at plants across the country. This is the norm in every industry.

Poverty on the rise in Europe

Elisabeth Zimmermann

The results of the Social Justice Index 2016 were published by the Bertelsmann Foundation last week. The index is an annual study of social conditions in Europe that has been conducted for the past several years. The results provide a devastating indictment of the austerity policies imposed by the European Union (EU), led by Germany, in the face of widespread resistance since the global financial crisis of 2008.

According to the study, one in four citizens is affected by poverty or social exclusion. This is a total of 118 million people. The percentage of people who are poor in spite of having a full-time job rose to 7.8 percent in 2015, an increase of 0.6 percent from 2013. This means that growing numbers of people are employed in the low-wage sector.

This also applies to Germany, which came in seventh place in the Social Justice Index, even though it is the largest economic power. The percentage of those in Germany who live in poverty despite having a full-time job rose from 5.1 percent in 2009 to 7.1 percent in 2015, a consequence of the massive low wage sector, which emerged following the Agenda 2010 reforms and Hartz welfare changes under the SPD-Green government of Gerhard Schröder and Joschka Fischer.

The rise of the so-called working poor, meaning those who are unable to live despite working, and the potential for a social uprising are concerns occupying the authors. As the chief executive of the Bertelsmann Foundation Art de Geus commented, “A growing percentage of people who cannot live permanently from their work undermines the legitimacy of our economic and social order.”

Although the study’s authors seek to identify a few minimal improvements—such as the decline in the official unemployment rate in the EU from 10.4 percent in 2014 to 9.6 percent in the following year and the rise in the employment rate from 64.8 to 65.8 percent—the numbers showing increased unemployment and poverty point to another trend.

In a brief summary of the results, the study therefore stated, “Social justice in Europe in 2016: Improvements on shaky ground.”

The risk of poverty within the EU remains high. As in 2008, the figure in 2015 stood at 23.7 percent. Conditions for children and young people are especially critical, particularly in southern Europe. The study states, “However, seven years after the outbreak of the world economic crisis, chances for participation for people in most European states—with few exceptions—have substantially worsened compared to prior to the crisis.”

Among the 28 EU states, Greece remains at the bottom of the Social Justice Index. The gap between Romania (ranked 27) and Bulgaria (ranked 26) has in fact grown.

But even conditions in the northern European countries of Sweden, Finland and Denmark, which captured first, second and third place respectively, have deteriorated. “Compared against the conditions in 2007-08, these states have suffered setbacks on matters of social justice,” the study states.

The social gulf between northern and southern Europe continues to be immense. This is above all due to the horrifyingly high poverty figures in Greece and Spain. In Spain, the poverty rate is 28.6 percent and in Greece it is 35.7 percent. The percentage of children and young people affected by poverty in these countries is even higher.

One particular focus of the study is the high rate of youth unemployment. 4.6 million young people in the EU are unemployed. In 2015, 20.4 percent of young people had no work, an increase of almost 5 percentage points since 2008.

Children and young people are also affected most severely by poverty and social exclusion. This applies to 25 million children and young people under the age of 18. “In the vast majority of EU states, chances for children and young people since 2007-08 have—sometimes drastically—deteriorated,” the study stated. “The situation in the crisis states of southern Europe, Italy, Greece and Spain, as well as in the southeast European countries Bulgaria and Romania continues to remain very critical,” it added.

Romania leads the way in the percentage of children under 18 living in poverty with 46.8 percent, followed by Bulgaria with 43.7, Greece (37.8 percent) and Hungary (36.1 percent). But also in Spain (34.4 percent), Italy (33.5 percent), Britain (30.3 percent) and Portugal (29.6 percent) the share is very high. In Greece, the number of children facing severe material deprivation has almost tripled since 2007. It has risen from 9.7 to 25.7 percent due to the austerity dictates of the troika, the European Commission, European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The study explained, “Material deprivation means that the people affected must deal with severe deprivation and can no longer financially afford basic necessities of daily life (i.e., an appropriately heated apartment or a telephone).” It frequently also means that families can no longer provide adequate nourishment and medications.

In the countries hit hardest by the euro crisis, Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal, the number of children in poverty or facing social exclusion has risen by 1.1 million since 2008.

Another section of the study focused on so-called NEETs (not in education, employment or training). This includes young people between ages 20 and 24 not attending school, who have no work and are not in professional training. Within the EU, the average rate was 17.3 percent, compared to 15 percent in 2008. Italy (31.1 percent) and Spain (22.8 percent) were well above the EU average.

The total number of unemployed young people in Spain and Greece amounted to almost 50 percent. In Italy, despite a modest decline, it was still 40.3 percent.

The high numbers of unemployed and impoverished young people without any future prospects is a devastating indictment of the EU’s austerity policies pursued for years. European governments, regardless of the parties involved, know no other policy than the offloading of the economic crisis onto the backs of the working class. They are recouping hundreds of billions of euros used to bail out the banks and corporations by destroying jobs, cutting wages and slashing social welfare. The pseudo-left Syriza government in Greece has been especially brutal in this.

The Bertelsmann study commented on the levels of poverty within the EU, but says nothing about its origins and those who are politically responsible. Instead, it appeals to the EU Commission and governments of the EU states to ensure greater social justice. But nothing could be more delusional than expecting a more social policy from Europe’s capitalist governments. The main direction of their policies is the domestic and foreign build-up of the state apparatus and the preparation of new wars. This is how they respond to social tensions and the anger over social inequality.