At Melanchthon's instigation, I've translated a tribune by French (ex-PS went by EELV now without party label) politician and researcher Pierre Larrouturou. The piece was in Monday's Le Monde. As this is an appeal for support for the Roosevelt 2012 Collective (of which Larrouturou is a founder), I'm hoping there'll be no copyright problems - particularly as I'll offer the translation to the Collective.

"Nous ne voulons pas mourir dans les décombres du néolibéralisme !"		"We do not want to die in the rubble of neoliberalism!"
Les systèmes tiennent souvent plus longtemps qu'on ne le pense, mais ils finissent par s'effondrer beaucoup plus vite qu'on ne l'imagine." En quelques mots, l'ancien chef économiste du Fonds monétaire international, Kenneth Rogoff, résume bien la situation de l'économie mondiale. Quant au gouverneur de la Banque d'Angleterre, il affirme que "la prochaine crise risque d'être plus grave que celle de 1930"...		Systems often hold on longer than we might think, but they end up collapsing much faster than we imagine." In a few words, the former chief economist of the IMF, Kenneth Rogoff, gives a good summary of the situation of the global economy. As for the Governor of the Bank of England, he says "the next crisis is likely to be worse than 1930" ...
La zone euro ne va pas bien, mais les Etats-Unis et la Chine, souvent présentés comme les deux moteurs de l'économie mondiale, sont en fait deux bombes à retardement : la dette totale des Etats-Unis atteint 358 % du produit intérieur brut (PIB) ; la bulle immobilière chinoise, presque trois fois plus grosse qu'elle ne l'était aux Etats-Unis avant la crise des subprimes, commence à éclater.		The euro area is in poor health, but the United States and China, often presented as the twin engines of the global economy, are actually two time bombs: the total debt of the United States has reached 358% of gross domestic product (GDP); the Chinese housing bubble, almost three times larger than it was in the U.S. before the subprime crisis, is beginning to burst.
Vu le contexte international, comment le PS et l'UMP peuvent-ils continuer de tout miser sur le retour de la croissance ? Il n'y a qu'une chance sur mille pour que ce rêve devienne réalité. "Ça va être effroyable, me confiait récemment un responsable socialiste. Il n'y aura aucune marge de manoeuvre. Dès le mois de juin, on va geler des dépenses. Dans quelques mois, le pays sera paralysé par des manifestations monstres et, en 2014, on va se prendre une raclée historique aux élections."		Given the international context, how can the (French) PS and the UMP go on gambling on the return of growth? There isn't one chance in a thousand for this dream to become reality. "It will be terrible," a socialist leader confided to me recently. "There will be no leeway. As soon as June, we will freeze spending. In a few months the country will be paralyzed by mass demonstrations and, in 2014, we will take an historic beating in the elections."
L'austérité est-elle la seule solution ? La gauche au pouvoir est-elle condamnée à décevoir ? Non. L'Histoire montre qu'il est possible de s'extraire de la "spirale de la mort" dans laquelle nos pays sont en train de s'enfermer.		Is austerity the only solution? Is the left in power condemned to let everyone down? No. History shows it is possible to get out of the "death spiral" which our countries are now shutting themselves into.

Read on...

VERY lucky with the weather for May Day at the Bastille.

Slideshow (click box bottom right for full screen and move cursor up to lose thumbnails at bottom) :

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sybariter/sets/72157629584891284/show/

After that went with a friend to Bofinger, for a more bourgeois experience, but a very reasonable and good menu for 32.

Later in walked De Villepin with three attractive young women, probably his daughter, who is a model, and her friends.

As promised (and this will teach people to be careful what they ask for) here is my photo diary for the EuroTrib April 2012 Paris Meet Up.

I'll begin with the view leading up to Paris as our Air France flight from Munich was landing at CDG:

I am inordinately fond of these "fields of gold" and have so many photos of them from visits to Europe going back to 1989 that they serve as proof of an obsession.

I'll be putting up a diary on the upcoming Greek elections, both the most promising and the most ominous in recent history as well as the most unpredictable, shortly... The elections are scheduled for next Sunday, so they will coincide with the second round of the French presidential elections, and probably will be overshadowed by them... At least initially...

This here is an introductory diary that would like to open a discussion about the possibilities and prospects of an antiausteritarian policy starting from a single, small EU country. It's more of a call for a discussion really as it is not just about Greece, but in general about the possibilities and routes of escape from the straitjacket of ECB brand austerity... Something most of us here aim and wish for...

See this: Greek anti-bailout leftist wins over austerity-weary voters:

Alexis Tsipras says Greece's political elite are bluffing when they say harsh austerity cuts are required to keep the country in the euro zone. And he wants Greek voters to call them on it.
With Greece due to vote on May 6, the young leader of the Left Coalition party is urging Greeks to vote out austerity - and the two pro-bailout parties imposing it - arguing Europe cannot afford to kick Greece out of the monetary union.
"It's a pseudo-dilemma, a fabricated myth, that our future in the euro is at risk. It is blackmail by pro-bailout parties, a tool to pressure people to accept measures that bring misery," he told Reuters in this port city in central Greece.
"If any country left the euro under the pressure of markets, then as a herd they would seek the next one to speculate on. The cost for the zone, for Germany, would be huge," he said.
The rhetoric may find little sympathy among Greece's international lenders, but it is winning him voters at home. The 38-year-old leftist's party is one of four vying for third place in national elections on May 6.

frontpaged - Nomad

A colleague sent me this video "David Tilman- Food Energy and the Environment: Can we feed the world and save the earth?"

Tilman makes an important argument, supported by clearly resourced data. Worth a look, though it's 72 minutes long. Skip the first 5 minutes of introductions to get to the meat (the older definition of meat - for the vegetarians present).

From Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group and also a great summary of what this battle (in Scotland) really is all about. There is a massive offshore effort going on in the waters around the British Isles these days, one that could dwarf the already massive oil and gas industry. Something well in excess of $US 100 billion in the next decade will be invested in making electricity from there, and the neat thing about wind is that it will never deplete, at least as long as humans are on this planet....

My camera got switched on in my bag and drained the battery - so iphone pics:

As it was often raining we didn't take our usual walk to the Eiffel Tower after lunch on Saturday. We stayed in the Canteloup till about 6.30, then moved on about 50 yards to Les Ondes for dinner and more chat - you name it, we discussed it.

The view just round the corner from my hotel:

Locking down an American workforce

Sweatshop labor is back with a vengeance. It can be found across broad stretches of the American economy and around the world. Penitentiaries have become a niche market for such work. The privatization of prisons in recent years has meant the creation of a small army of workers too coerced and right-less to complain.

Prisoners, whose ranks increasingly consist of those for whom the legitimate economy has found no use, now make up a virtual brigade within the reserve army of the unemployed whose ranks have ballooned along with the U.S. incarceration rate. The Corrections Corporation of America and GEO, two prison privatizers, along with a third smaller operator, G4S (formerly Wackenhut), sell inmate labor at subminimum wages to Fortune 500 corporations like Chevron, Bank of America, AT&T, and IBM.

Hello.  

Sorry for this very personal diary but I have a friend who is German but living in Strasbourg.  She is not entitled to benefits in Germany because she worked in France for the last few years.

She suffers from Asperger's syndrome and she has problems  thriving in society.  She has no job at the moment but has a little money for an apartment to share if it is not too expensive.  She is on unemployment in France.

She could travel to Basel or somewhere else close to Strasbourg for a job or shelter but she needs to be with people who are understanding.  She does not understand people's motives when they are speaking to her, for example.

If you know anyone, or any organisation, company, etc that could help her in getting a place to live or a job, even for a short time, this would really help.

I am not in Europe at the moment, and am having a few financial problems so I am not able to help her as much as I would like.

She really is a nice person, but has been challenged by this difficult condition.

Thank you for your help.

Solar IS Civil Defense - what we are all supposed to have on hand in case of emergency - flashlight, cell phone, radio, extra set of batteries - can be powered by a few square inches of solar electric panel.  Add a hand crank or bicycle generator and you have a reliable source of survival level electricity, day or night, by sunlight or muscle power.

This is also entry level electrical power for the 1.5 billion people around the world who do not yet have access to electricity.  Civil defense at home and economic development abroad can be combined in a "buy one, give one" program like the Bogolight (http://www.bogolight.com) which is a solar LED light and AA battery charger.

Solar IS Civil Defense and could be much more.

-------------------------

I wish the mainline environmental groups had been broadcasting practical material like this for the last twenty years or so instead of devoting almost all their advertising to scaring us about climate change.

Originally published at http://solarray.blogspot.com/2012/04/solar-is-civil-defense-what-we-are-all.html

A rather unique political tour de force is coming to a (first) conclusion in the Netherlands the past Thursday evening.

Was the country quickly heading to become the laughing stock of the Eurozone at the start of this week, a breathtaking manoeuvre by the political parties in The Hague has now saved the face of the caretaker cabinet of Mark Rutte and co. Dutch austerity is on its way, Merkel and Brussels can release a tiny sigh of relief, the budget deficit will be cut towards the three percent limit.

Sore losers and ebullient winners have emerged in just a few days. A quick overview.

So says Steve Randy Waldman in his current post on his blog, interfluidity:

We are in a depression, but not because we don't know how to remedy the problem. We are in a depression because it is our revealed preference, as a polity, not to remedy the problem. We are choosing continued depression because we prefer it to the alternatives.

Usually, economists are admirably catholic about the preferences of the objects they study. They infer desire by observing behavior, listening to what people do more than to what they say. But with respect to national polities, macroeconomists presume the existence of an overwhelming preference for GDP growth and full employment that simply does not exist. They act as though any other set of preferences would be unreasonable, unthinkable. (Emphasis added.)

I can think of reasons macroeconomists might want to pretend that there is a general preference for GDP growth and full employment, but there are many macroeconomists who certainly do not presume such preferences exist. Most are just not amongst "The Serious People".

Not to be undone by Barack Obama's underwhelming Earth Day proclamation, Mitt Romney celebrated "Fock the Earth Day" with a major speech about the importance of regulations on fossil fuel production ... that is, the importance of eviscerating them so as to please his fossil foolish contributors.

"Holding off on drilling in the Gulf, holding off on drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf, holding off on drilling in Alaska, trying to impose the federal government into `fracking' regulations with regards to natural gas. Then, of course, all the regulations related to coal, making it harder to mine it, making it harder to use it."

In an effort to make the George W Bush Administration look to be rabid environmentalists (after all, President Bush did speak about Global Warming and did discuss the need to address America's "oil addiction), Mitt Romney has wrapped himself in the Grand Oil Party's fossil foolish mania.

After 7 months in Luxembourg, where my professional carer has been successfully relaunched, I returned to Portugal for this Easter. It was a time to review family and many friends, to rest and see a bit more of a country that can have many good experiences to offer. I brought back mixed feelings, while it is always pleasing to return home, the contact on the flesh with the present social context was rather depressing. Portugal has changed a lot these past months, the crisis has installed itself and spread like the plague. Most folk are being hit one way or the other and families that seemed to be in a comfortable situation when I left are now facing daunting difficulties. This text is a postcard from my visit to Portugal. It has no real photos, like a black and white documentary about war, I prefer using words to paint an hideous scenery.

front-paged by afew

No, you don't get to vote, it's just an unscientific opinion poll (tautology alert!)

To help to place your bet, I suggest this summary of opinion polls, and this article on abstention rates (news on participation at midday puts this year's abstention as somewhere between the 16.2% of 2007 and the 28.4% of 2002).

Please comment your prediction in this thread.

This poll closes at 6.30pm French time. Happy voting!

Undecided voters hold key to outcome of referendum

The outcome of the European stability treaty referendum on May 31st is wide open, according to the latest Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll which shows the result is in the hands of undecided voters.

Asked whether they were likely to vote Yes or No to the treaty, 30 per cent of voters said Yes, 23 per cent said No, 39 per cent were undecided and 8 per cent said they would not vote. When undecided voters, and those who won't vote, are excluded the Yes side is ahead by 58 per cent to 42 per cent but the outcome hinges on the attitude of the currently undecided voters.

A real worry for the Government is that at a similar stage in the first Lisbon Treaty referendum campaign in May 2008, the Yes side had a much bigger lead but the measure was rejected by the electorate in June of that year by 53 per cent to 47 per cent.

However, the Yes side can take heart from the fact that support for a No vote has halved since the last Irish Times poll in October, which asked people how they were likely to vote if EU leaders agreed on a treaty to deal with the fiscal crisis.

At that stage 28 per cent said they would vote Yes, 47 per cent No and 25 per cent were undecided.

The details of today's poll show that the Yes campaign has strong backing from middle-class voters and farmers but working-class voters are opposed to it by a large margin.

There is also a significant gender difference, with men more supportive of the treaty, while almost half of women voters have yet to make up their minds.

The Irish referendum on the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) treaty is scheduled to take place on 31st. May, and there has been some criticism that this allows inadequate time for a public information campaign and debate. The domestic political landscape has been dominated by controversial new household taxes, water charges and septic tank charges that the Government, allegedly under Troika pressure, is trying to introduce in order to broaden the tax base. The run up to the campaign has also been complicated by efforts to restructure the Anglo-Irish Bank Promissory notes which have so far been stonewalled by the ECB.

front-paged by afew

Over at Flip Chart Fairy Tales is an interesting post. I don't know what to make of it, so I thought - diary time...

The end of the state as we knew it | Flip Chart Fairy Tales

Two reports about the cost of ageing and its fiscal impact came out last week. The IMF's Financial Stability Report concluded that the cost of longevity has been consistently underestimated. By 2050, it says, if people are living for even three years longer than current models predict, it would add 50 percent to the estimated costs of ageing. In short, then, governments and pension funds may have got their sums quite seriously wrong. The IMF calculates that, by 2050, the costs of ageing, including healthcare, welfare spending and pensions, will increase by 5.8 percent of GDP in the advanced economies.

The OECD's report on fiscal consolidation, also out last week, came up with a very similar figure. If current levels of benefits and care are to be maintained, it estimated an increase in age-related spending of 6 percent of GDP by 2050. These figures don't differ that much from the ones I pulled together from various sources last year. The consensus there was around 4 percent of GDP by 2030, so add another twenty years and 6 percent looks like a reasonable guess. It's impossible to predict so far ahead with any accuracy but the general consensus seems to be that ageing populations are going to cost a hell of a lot.

The problem, as both reports point out, is that the economies with the highest percentage of oldies are also the ones with the highest public debt levels. The increased costs of ageing, says the IMF could, by 2050, see the UK's debt rising to 130 percent of GDP, the US and Germany's to 150 percent and Japan's to 300 percent!

front-paged by afew

The main meet-up will be on Saturday 28 April. Meet from 12 noon for lunch, prolongations ad lib.

Where? Le Cantalou, where else?

Le Cantalou, 8, avenue de Versailles (map)

Who will be there? Let's see...

• Jerome a Paris
  
• dvx
  
• Helen
  
• Wife and Husband of Bath
  
• Colman
  
• Migeru and SteelLady
  
• gk
  
• Bernard
  
• Ted Welch
  
• Luis de Sousa
  
• afew
  
• redstar +++
  
• LEP
  
• Cyrille
  
• linca
  
• eurogreen
  

+

• pi?
  

Add your name in comments if you've been forgotten in this list or if you're a late adopter!

Friday evening, details below the fold. Any ideas for Sunday?

A big day once again and the Murdoch press just can't manage once again to stay out of the papers. (Even when in this case it appears to be mostly unconnected) And something big from the US side of the Atlantic too.

Firstly we have  an announcement by the UK's Director of public prosecutions Keir Starmer that the police have today handed  four files to the Crown Prosecution service

The New York times explains this step,
British Prosecutors Consider Charges in Phone Hacking Case - NYTimes.com

Under  Britain's judicial system, criminal charges are drawn up by the Crown Prosecution Service on the basis of evidence gathered by the police. A spokeswoman for the service said that the names of those now being considered for prosecution would not be released, and that the service could not say when it would take the next step, deciding whether to prosecute those involved or not.

Not that there was ever much doubt. Nicolas Sarkozy was elected in 2007 thanks to posturing as the xenophobic hard man of the moment, siphoning part of the Front National's electorate and winning with the support of the over-65s. He promised to clean up the cités (sink estates, housing projects) with a pressure hose. His administration and its mouthpieces proceeded to continue with the talk and the gesticulation, stigmatising youth, immigrants, and Muslims, which alienated part of centrist opinion while being insufficient to guarantee the loyalty of the extreme right. French contributors to ET have said this again and again: every time Sarko pandered to that electorate, he was working for the Front National.

Now it's payback time. He is forced to run to the right to have any chance of winning, and so has raised the xenophobia and anti-Muslim bidding (halal, Schengen, etc), the effect of which keeps him out of the centre where a good proportion of voters are not scared of Hollande. He has never been more frantic in his jumping from one lead to another (from the far right to ludicrous attempts to curry favour in the centre by letting it be known he would consider François Bayrou as Prime Minister, to the silly talk slapped down by Germany about how growth should be part of the ECB's remit) and in dramatising the stakes: the end of the world as we know it if Hollande wins; channeling John-Paul II with the repeated injunction "Do not be afraid" at the mass rally on Sunday... Twitching, gesticulating, in a genuine danse macabre... Because he's going to lose.

UPDATE 18 April : the latest poll (CSA) gives Hollande 29% Sarkozy 24% in Round One, 58-42 in Round Two.