In the global scheme of things, this is perhaps a smaller issue, although the provision of government housing interacts with that issue of the day - the property boom. However, it shines a light on a microcosm of the overall neo-liberal scam - creating temporary prosperity by selling off the wealth accumulated in the past and stealing from future generations, in this case by offloading the negative consequences on to them. I've synthesised his article with some experiences from estates near to where I live to try to understand the phenomenon.

[In banking the theft from the future appears more direct, monetizing future cash flows into the present.]

To that extent, this announcement at their party conference is somewhat surprising, and indicates that some things do seem to have shifted:

Fran posted this article in the Salon:

Austria opens the polls to 16-year-olds - Europe, World - The Independent

Austria becomes the first country in the European Union to grant its 16-year-olds the right to vote in a general election this weekend but the move has provoked widespread controversy and criticism, even from the teenagers heading for the ballot box for the first time.

The new law lowering the voting age from 18 to 16 was passed last year by Austria's grand coalition government of conservatives and Social Democrats. It was expected to be used for the first time in polls scheduled for 2010, but the governing coalition was consumed by infighting and collapsed in July. And 200,000 new Austrian voters aged 16 and 17, now have a chance to vote on Sunday.

The move is designed to offset what is seen as a demographic imbalance caused by the Alpine state's rapidly ageing population. Last year Austria's 65-year-olds exceeded the number of 15-year-olds in the country. However, critics have argued that given the snap elections, the youngsters have not had enough time to prepare themselves as a result. And some of the would-be voters - who can purchase beer and wine even though they cannot drive or do military service - concur.

"I don't agree with the idea of teenagers of my age being given the right to vote," said Julia Tauschek, a 16-year-old high school pupil from the Austrian town of Linz yesterday. "We simply don't know enough about politics and we are not taught much about them at school either."

Within the EU, this is the first national election in which 16 and 17 year olds will vote.

According to Wikipedia municipal elections in some states in Germany and of course lower level elections in Austria have already taken place under similar rules, but I would argue that the election of the national government is a psychologically different affair that we should all be watching closely.

We've discussed before the role of Irwin Stelzer as henchman of Rupert Murdoch and high priest of the News International Voodoo Economics Order...

So it was with some surprise that I came across this speech, linked to in the Guardian:

Irwin Stelzer: Capitalism as we knew it is finished | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

This is the opening of a lecture given by Irwin Steltzer on 'The Political Economy of America' to the Centre for Policy Studies on Thursday September 25 2008. To read the full text, go here.

Choice quotes from the speech below (my emphases):

LAOS: Film Reveals CIA's 'Most Secret Place on Earth'
By Andrew Nette

PHNOM PENH, Aug 22 (IPS) - It was known as the `secret war', a covert operation waged by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) throughout the sixties and early seventies against communist guerrillas in Laos.

And the most secret location in this clandestine war was the former CIA air base of Long Chen, in central Laos, a place that remain off limits even today.

A new film, `The Most Secret Place on Earth', to be released in cinemas across Europe later this year, explores this little known conflict.

The film, which previewed for the first time in Phnom Penh in mid-August, includes images of Long Chen shot by the first Western camera crew to enter the base since the communists took control of the country in 1975.

A recent post caught my eye (and is well worth reading in full, as it touches on many of the questions that ET mulls over about the future) but the following excerpt hit right at something I've wondered about a lot:

What are the jobs in a "post-industrial" or "financialised" or "Anglo-Disease" economy?

And what is the relationship between employment in large firms and small ones?

Diary rescue by afew

I'd urge you to read it in full, as it puts some numbers around some key questions about neoliberalism:

naked capitalism: Hoisted From Comments: Has Neo-Liberalism Failed to Deliver the Goods?

Reader Juan provided a well-argued and provocatively-worded critique of so-called market fundamentalism yesterday that I thought would provide grist for thought and discussion. The main argument in favor of less regulated commerce, both domestically, in the form of deregulation, and internationally, via more liberal trade regimes, is that it generates higher growth. Juan argues that the results have been the reverse.

Promoted by Colman

The 2008 theme logo: it was inspired by Belgrade's situation at the confluence of the Danube and Sava rivers [added by DoDo]

Final Results

1. Russia
2. Ukraine
3. Greece

Top of the betting so far seems to be jointly:

Russia - Dima Bilan - Believing

and

Ukraine - Ani Lorak - Shady Lady

I added a special section (like in the Salon) for Eurovision comments. I don't know if I'll have time to liveblog. So anyone who has time, please keep us up to date! If you're not at a TV, it appears you can watch online if you go to the Eurovision Belgrade 2008 site.

Usual chart roundups follow below. As always, post a chart that interests you and a couple of youtubes and comments on songs!

Event starts at 21h CET. Promoted by DoDo

As usual please post a chart from a country you have an interest in, along with any commentary.

Remember no more than a couple of Youtube embeds each to keep the diary loading time down!

It's also only a week until that festival of top down European popular culture - Eurovision. This week saw the vaguely related Eurovision Young Musicians competition.

More below:

Things I would like to see are diaries about social/cultural/political trends that are occuring not just in one country, but across Europe. Diaries about the emerging 'European space', as it were, above the national, but below the global.

linca said:

Is there knowledge about EU-wide trends in sociology/culture ? I read a bit of sociology, but pretty much all of it is France-centered. There are EU-wide stats, but stats don't make political and social analysis all by themselves.

The advantage of ET is that each could bring knowledge about his own country ; and that sometimes happen in some diaries. But is that enough to identify EU-wide trends ?

Now in serious questions of sociology and culture we don't have many resources. But if ET is a building block of a future European public sphere then popular culture is important too.

Couple of interesting articles connecting to this theme:

Radical solutions | Comment is free

Radical solutions

Progressives do have answers to the current economic crisis, they just haven't been given the attention they deserve

Mark Braund

Aditya Chakrabortty is right to lament the poor contribution of progressives to the debate about the economic crisis. The only option advanced by contributors to Cif's Economies in Crisis series is a return to Keynesian demand management and tougher market regulation. While this strategy helped the western economies to rebuild after 1945, Keynesian thinking suited the special circumstances of the postwar period, circumstances that hardly apply today. There is no permanent solution to the crisis, and certainly no path to widespread economic justice, in Keynes' prescription.

The problem with economics, whether practised by academics, journalists, politicians or the wonks that staff the thinktanks to which we look for guidance, is that taking sufficiently radical a position to force new thinking onto the mainstream agenda usually constitutes career suicide.

It's not as if there are no alternatives on offer. But the establishment has become adept at keeping ideas that challenge the status quo firmly out of public view. This process is partly directed by the vested interests of minority wealth and privilege, but has also become embedded in the institutions and long-held assumptions which shape today's economic landscape. Perhaps the best example is the concerted campaign against the ideas of Henry George.

Frank and ChrisCook should both read the above one in particular.

Diary rescue by Migeru

Diary rescue by afew - original post March 26

So the latest article by Malcolm Gladwell for the New Yorker is the usual combination of "story hook," verbose description and narrative and the obligatory musings on "normal distributions" vs "power laws". I happen to like his style, so I'd highly recommend you read the whole article, right now, but even if you don't, he addresses a very interesting issue.

In essence: we conceive of social safety-net provision in the form of helping those who are "down on their luck."

However, we're slowly recognising that some of the people who most persistently require various emergency interventions (and thus get the most money spent on them) can only be helped by very targeted (and much more expensive) actions. They are also often, to some degree the authors of their own demise.

This can be philosophically problematic, as Gladwell illustrates:

BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Taiwan victor promises China ties

Taiwan's newly-elected president has pledged to establish better economic and political ties with China. Ma Ying-jeou said he would like to work towards a peace treaty with Beijing, but would only do so if China removed missiles pointed at Taiwan. He said he had no immediate plans to visit the mainland, but wanted to work on "substantive issues". Mr Ma won a comfortable victory over Frank Hsieh of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party on Saturday. Official results gave Mr Ma 58.45% of the vote - an advantage of nearly 17 percentage points over Mr Hsieh. Mr Ma, of the Kuomintang party, had stood on a platform of economic reform and improving relations with China.

Taiwan nationalists in huge win
Taiwan's opposition nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) party has won a landslide victory in parliamentary polls, official results show.

The KMT, which wants closer ties with China, secured 72% of the seats in the 113-seat chamber, beating President Chen Shui-bian's party, the DPP.

The independence-leaning president said he was "shamed", resigning as chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party.

The elections are seen as a barometer for the presidential poll on 22 March.

China regards Taiwan as a renegade province that should be reunified.

Nevada schmevada - Diary rescue by Migeru

FT.com / Markets / Investor's notebook - Insight: Equities hold up against the crunch

In our view, the consensus still fails to grasp the enormity of what is at stake, in essence a threat to the global credit creation mechanism. The process of "securitisation" is too big, too integral to fail. That may be true, but by the time this crisis is over, it is going to be a lot more tightly regulated - not least as pro-cyclical Basel II capital adequacy rules are implemented. That could change the supply of credit. The big issue next year is not going to be the cost of credit; it is going to be the availability of credit. Companies face a shock as they realise they can no longer boost return on equity simply by issuing debt to buy back stock. They will have to learn to run themselves "for growth", and not just "for cash".

Article in Slate here.

You should go read the whole article, but here's a "key excerpt":

About a third of jobs in developed economies like Britain may be lost to globalisation. That is the conclusion not of opponents of globalisation but of an increasing number of economists who are enthusiasts for globalisation.

Indeed, said Laura Tyson, business professor from California, former dean of the London Business School, and adviser to one of the Democratic presidential candidates (almost certainly Hillary), at a lecture in the Treasury last night, it remains true that globalisation cannot be stopped and protectionism will not work. But this is little comfort to the losers. Her main message was that job losses are inevitable and governments need to develop policies now to help people and the economy adapt. Sir Gus O'Donnell, the cabinet secretary, was sat in the front row and praised Tyson for her terrifyingly smart lecture.

One the one hand, it's refreshing to hear someone in the "economics advisor mainstream" admit what looks pretty obvious. Jobs are being exported and the invisible hand won't replace them.

On the other hand, it's rather worrying. Sure, the market system may fix itself eventually, but examples of regional unemployment (North of England, East Germany) suggest that it takes on the order of 20-30 years for the market to begin to return employment to depressed areas. Add in the complications of international job transfers and we could easily be looking at 50 years or more of increased unemployment here in developed economies.

That said, this is a useful article:

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | A friend of feudalism

A friend of feudalism

Pakistan has long been ruled by an elite. Benazir Bhutto's return would perpetuate the old order

Not far from the ruins of the ancient city of Mohenjo-Daro, lies Benazir Bhutto's feudal estate of Larkhana. In this backward and arid region amid the dry salt flats of the Indus plain, Bhutto's family have long been the most prominent land owners, and the area is witness to many of the Borgia-like feuds that distinguish the lives of Pakistan's feudal elite.

The last time I visited the estate, in 1994, a convoy from the house of Begum Bhutto - Benazir's mother - to her husband's grave had just been shot at by police, leading to the deaths of three of the family's retainers. Begum was in no doubt that the police were acting to support Benazir. Soon afterwards, there was the funeral of Benazir's brother Murtaza, who had just returned to Pakistan to try to oust his sister from control of the family's political wing, the Pakistan People's party. He died, along with six of his supporters, in a hail of police bullets, yards from his front door. Many pointed the finger of suspicion at Benazir, and her husband was later charged with complicity in the murder.

How the neoliberals stitched up the wealth of nations for themselves

A cabal of intellectuals and elitists hijacked the economic debate, and now we are dealing with the catastrophic effects

For the first time the UK's consumer debt exceeds the total of its gross national product: a new report shows that we owe £1.35 trillion. Inspectors in the United States have discovered that 77,000 road bridges are in the same perilous state as the one which collapsed into the Mississippi. Two years after Hurricane Katrina struck, 120,000 people from New Orleans are still living in trailer homes and temporary lodgings. As runaway climate change approaches, governments refuse to take the necessary action. Booming inequality threatens to create the most divided societies the world has seen since before the first world war. Now a financial crisis caused by unregulated lending could turf hundreds of thousands out of their homes and trigger a cascade of economic troubles.

These problems appear unrelated, but they all have something in common. They arise in large part from a meeting that took place 60 years ago in a Swiss spa resort. It laid the foundations for a philosophy of government that is responsible for many, perhaps most, of our contemporary crises.

From the diaries ~ whataboutbob