Tanto per chiarire / Just to make it clear


Tanto per chiarire / Just to make it clear

Più che un blog questo è un diario di appunti, dove spesso mi segno e rilancio articoli ed opinion interessanti trovate in giro per la rete.

Cerco sempre di citare e linkare correttamente la fonte originale. Se comunque trovaste roba vostra che volete che tolga o corregga, vi prego di segnalarmelo a Stef@cutillo.eu
This is a notebook -not really a blog- where I often relaunch interesting stuff I find roaming on the net.
I always try to link correctly the original sources. If anyway you find your stuff and want me to remove or correct it, please let me know at Stef@cutillo.eu


Questo blog, ovviamente, non rappresenta una testata giornalistica in quanto viene aggiornato senza alcuna periodicità e con molta poca coerenza. Non può pertanto considerarsi un prodotto editoriale ai sensi della legge n. 62 del 7.03.2001 e seguenti.
This is just a silly legal note to state that this (SURPRISE! SURPRISE!)
is not a newspaper or a news publication whatsoever.

giovedì 24 giugno 2010

Save the economy: save democracy. Dump the economy, fuck democracy!

Let's cut the crap!
Economy needs radical reforms and social-democratic ones!
It's not by bailing out the banks that you relaunch the economy: it's by bailing out the mortgages and redistributing purchase power on a wider scale.

It's not by forcing Greece, Spain etc. to cut salaries and social state to the low income people, but by going back to a tax rates increasing with the wealth and income and passing the bigger share of the bill to the ones that ate the bigger piece of the cake.

With all the Ain Rand / Thatcher / Reagan bullshit of the latest decades we have been depriving the very same democracy of its main meaning: Participation, sharing and freedom. The real one: the one that allows everyone to chose, not only who can afford it!

If we don't make a step back a bigger chunk of the population will start wondering why is democracy worth it.
That's how Communism and Nazism were born.

A couple of days ago I was reading a report on Chavez's Venezuela.
In the crisis he is spending on social support, health care, etc.
NOT on supporting the ones who pay him bribes (sorry: 'finance his political campaign') as it happens in our fat democracies.
The result is that unemployment is decreasing to rates that we can only dream in Europe and people (the normal people, not the honoured members of this and other networks) are much better off and fought for him when CIA tried to topple him with a golpe.
And they didn't give a shit about the freedom of a press that was not free at all, but at the orders of its owners.

Is this where we want to go?
Void democracy of its meaning to the point that people will prefer a honest dictator?

If no is the answer we should start by kicking the arse of all those idiots or whores (there's no other option) that from their comfortable sofas in the IMF, World Bank etc. have been imposing to poor countries to sell for a fistful of beans their last belongings to multinational corporations and we should got back to the obvious assumption that when there is a crisis it's the poorer that need help, not the richer ones!
And it's the middle class that drives the economy, not the fat sharks and the VIPs!

mercoledì 23 giugno 2010

No Boss day!

All management stuck outside for a full two days dept.-redesign session.
Most colleagues are out as well.
 
Time to finish all work I'd be postponing instead of running to extinguish bosses' fire all the time, but also time to relax a bit. :)

Where can I find a bike? :D

 

venerdì 18 giugno 2010

Altro che austerity! Qua finiamo in dittatura!

Ma pensa un po'! Proprio stamattina commentavo che se se continuiamo a soffocare l'economia con le misure d'austerità (anziché contrastare la speculazione) finiremo sotto dittatura.
E poi cado su questo qui:
Selvas Blog: Il bue dice cornuto all'asino
Se dittatura dev'essere, quasi meglio Chavez che Berlusconi!

Leggete e fate circolare questo lettera aperta, pubblicata da economisti italiani, sinché ancora possiamo!
http://www.letteradeglieconomisti.it/

Sono anche scomunicato "Latae sententiae" :)

Meglio di quanto mi aspettassi!
Mi ha scritto il vicariato di Roma per informarmi che, visto il mio rifiuto di appartenere alla chiesa cattolica, sono scomunicato, ho bisogno del permesso per sposarmi in chiesa, e che 'in mancanza di segni di pentimento' mi negano pure l'estrema unzione!!!


Poi dice che uno bestemmia! :)

domenica 6 giugno 2010

Austerity is the wrong answer

The only thing that seriously threatens the European Union (and the West in general) is the totally wrong attitude adopted to face the crisis: by supporting and feeding the elements that caused it.

The crisis has been caused by:
- toxic credits and we are supporting the banks who have been giving them
- speculation and we are posing the bases for more volatility
- decrease of the spending capability of the great population and we are imposing austerity on the lower incomes
- ...

What really puts Europe at risk now is the unsustainable economic liberalist nature of the Treaty of the Union and the irresponsible imposition of austerity measures that will only have as a outcome less spending power, more speculation, more bankruptcies, more concentration of wealth into the hands of a smaller fraction of the population...

If we go on like this, not only the EU is at risk (over all the euro) but we risk to slip back into soviet union! The moment the population can't feed their kids anymore, they will follow the first Mussolini, Hitler or Lenin that promises food in their dishes.

On the contrary we should walk the other way:
- higher progressive income and capital taxes rates,
- high taxes on short term financial investments,
- stronger (not weaker) protection of the social state and less "mobility"= more stability of work; less facility to lay off people
- slower growth, but more stable and more widely shared (there's no real progress if it's not for all, said Henry Ford)

Today the propaganda still keeps the population behind his leaders (over all in the US, where they lock disagreement with periodic conflicts that cause patriotism (= the refuge of the scoundrel, according to Samuel Johnson) but that will work less and less with the progressive reduction of the share of wealth that falls under the table of the richest.

This austerity mantra that everyone looks taking seriously is bringing us backwards of decades.
If we don't reverse gear now we'll get closer and closer to the France of Luis XVI or the Russia of the Zars.
And if you push a population to behead the wealthiest... what follows is Robespierre, Lenin or Hitler.
Do we want to get there?

I don't like to be a catastrophist, but each time I am my worries punctually happen.
You can call me Granny Cassandra and laugh of my worries ... or consider what might be correct in it and maybe for once help to avoid they become true.

http://www.letteradeglieconomisti.it/english.htm