Brexit Fallout: The Neoliberal Empire Strikes Back
The DOW went up nearly 300 points today. I guess "the beginning of the destruction of not only the EU but Western political civilization in its entirety” that Brexit was supposed to have caused, and the "most significant political risk the world has experienced since the Cuban Missile Crisis" will have to wait.
It's funny. I thought hyperbole was supposed to be something to be avoided because it might unnecessarily upset the market. Something else that never gets asked by the media is, “Why does the UK leaving the EU necessitate a global or UK financial meltdown?”
The answer is simple: it doesn't.
One thing you can count on, if things do eventually melt down, the neoliberal globalists now have a scapegoat to hide their incompetence - you.
Only because the establishment has hitched our economic destinies to the whims of financial markets is there any need to worry that Brexit might trigger yet another global meltdown. Only because the establishment failed to implement prudent, financial regulation in the seven years since the last financial crisis crashed the global economy is there any danger today. Only because the Cameron government and the European Commission responded to the Great Recession with counterproductive fiscal austerity is a return to deeper recession in Europe quite probable. But we can be sure of one thing: All negative economic trends will now be blamed on Brexit and the populist “mob” who brought it on, rather than on the establishment’s neoliberal policies which are actually responsible.
Labour Party MPs voted 172 to 40 in a no-confidence vote against party leader Jeremy Corbyn today.
Corbyn has not agreed to resign because Labour Party rules do not require it of him.
The criticism of Corbyn is that he "didn't try hard enough" to endorse a Torie-sponsored, losing measure that was rejected by Britain's working class. Which is absolutely bizarre logic if you think about it in simple party politics.
Corbyn is solidly backed by unions and rank-and-file members. So this move by the MPs can rightly be considered a coup.
Labour MPs do not just want to oust a leader with massive support among party members. They have hamstrung him from the outset so that he could not lead the political revolution members elected him to begin. And now he is being made to pay the price because he privately backs a position that, as the referendum has just shown, has majority support.
Most liberal and progressives quickly lined up against the xenophobic and reactionary forces that pushed through Brexit. That part made sense.
What didn't make sense is who they lined up alongside with.
The most reactionary side has won. But what was the other side ever about? Why did the progressive voices of Britain―and much of Europe as a whole―largely uncritically align themselves with the likes of David Cameron, Martin Schulz and all those Heroes of the People?
Sure Nigel Farage is not someone you want to be associated with, but is David Cameron really that much better? Or the same Germans who obliterated the welfare state in Greece?
This side of the coin rarely comes up in conversations.
Perhaps the ugliest part of the liberal and progressive reaction is the way they rejected the Brexit vote.
There is already the smirking suggestion that any vote going against the establishment will be declared void, that Britain will “do a Tsipras” and chose to simply ignore what happened. What shocks and saddens me the most is that the liberal and progressive forces in the country are already quick to line themselves behind this suggestion, unable to understand the colossal disregard of popular opinion it presumes and demands.
Distrusting and rejecting popular will has always been the domain of the wealthy, right-wing elite until now. And for what? Is fighting a initiative, supported by the working class and rejected by the globalist financial elite, really something you want to sacrifice a sacred value for?
You can't come back from rejecting democracy. You can't pick and chose what you will accept and call it democracy.
Once you've taken that step, it is over. There is no coming back.
Or as Matt Taibbi put it:
My admittedly primitive understanding of democracy is that we're supposed to move toward it, not away from it, in a moment of crisis....
If you think there's ever such a thing as "too much democracy," you probably never believed in it in the first place. And even low-Information voters can sense it.
A good example of this "new progressive" side can be found in this New Yorker article, called "A Perilous Nationalism at Brexit".
Now I've never been a fan of nationalism, but I find it ironic that these liberals can be threatened by nationalism when people vote against Globalism. Yet they don't see the dangers of nationalism when it comes to hyping it for war.
Bernie Sanders gets it.
Surprise, surprise. Workers in Britain, many of whom have seen a decline in their standard of living while the very rich in their country have become much richer, have turned their backs on the European Union and a globalized economy that is failing them and their children.
Comments
exactly
@eState4Column5
then how do you explain that working class British folks
all want to become Irish now. Apparently the Irish EU passport has something to do with it.
IreIreland urges Britons to stop applying for Irish passports after Brexit - Post offices and consular services have seen a record spike in Irish passport applications
Hmm, aren't there some Americans, who played with the thought to apply for dual citizenship, if they had ancestors in one of the European membership countries? Like for example Italy, to give your kids a chance to work and live in Europe, which you actually only can do that easily, if you have a passport from a EU membership country? All that moving around from any European country to the next and being allowed to work there? Seductive thoughts, no?
Just saying...
https://www.euronews.com/live
Sounds like this could work out really well for Ireland
A lot of trade between the EU and the rest of the World could end up going through Ireland as the path of least resistance, I would think.
Beware the bullshit factories.
I wondered about that.
If the EU countries are anything like the U.S, and I think they are only the people have bigger hutzpahs, my guess is the things that work will find their way back. But you raise a good question since I am in the process of getting dual Italian citizenship for my entire family so that my grandson can work at Lund and other universities in Europe. Even if I put his dreams aside, I would still want dual citizenship back to Italy. It is strange how this process has roused a sense of homeland in me, and it isn't directed at the US even though I've lived here all my life.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
I have all the empathy for those feelings, dkmich,
one of the hardest things for me to "accept" was that my son lost his German citizenship and with it an entry into EU countries to possibly work there one day. But he is so "broken and defeated" that he has no interest in it anymore, aside from the fact that the Germans are overly complicated and hostile to give him the chance. From what we have gone through with our application so far, I don't want to drag him through that unless he fights for it on his own. On the other hand he is very critical of the US political and social system as well. And I myself are already overly critical of Germany, though I still can't get over it, as the US has also not become "my home".
But in the end you live where you actually live and what you get to know over time. And you have to deal with it. Which can be very depressing and somewhat destructive to keep up your hopes and spirit. But heh, there are worse things than that.
For some people it's hard to know where they feel at home and where they actually are at home. I wish you much luck with your application. Italy is a beautiful country and the way I have experienced it very open minded to other ethnicities and foreigners. And they have the best fresh olives ever and so many nice little corner stores with panini etc. I gained 10 pounds over there during my one and a half year stay back in the days.
https://www.euronews.com/live
My niece's family
all have dual US/Irish citizenship. Her husband is from Ireland, although he had lived and worked in the US for about two decades. When they got married, she applied for dual citizenship and now their children are all dual citizens. It makes it much easier traveling back and forth to visit his family.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
I've seen this before
Just like ALL Americans wanted to flee to Canada in 2000.
In case you missed it, you are engaging in the same hyperbole that I just mocked in the essay.
Working class British folks do not all want to become Irish
There has been an increase in the number of people applying for Irish passports, but there is no breakdown as to their relationships to the means of production. The people that have been applying in greatest relative numbers are Northern Irish Catholics. They voted strongly in favor of remaining in the EU, for obvious reasons. If Ireland and the UK are both in the EU, it is much easier for them to move back and forth between Ireland and Northern Ireland. In effect, this is a sort of de facto Irish reunification. Plus, they get a lot of subsidy money from the EU. They very much want EU passports for many practical reasons. Flying in and out of Dublin would be a easier with an EU passport than a UK passport, for example. Interestingly, Northern Irish Protestants voted strongly in favor of leaving the EU even though staying had the same practical advantages for them. There are certainly practical advantages to having an EU passport and the idea of having a united Europe is attractive. The problem with the EU is that it has mutated over the past 30 years to a bastion of neoliberalism with supply side economics built into the currency. These characteristics are baked in to the treaties of Maastricht and Lisbon and there is no easy way to change them, no amendment mechanism. Increasingly the EU has become antidemocratic, run by an unelected commission.
I'm sure they had more than a little help
from their loyal Yankee counterparts in DC, to get to this point:
How coincidental that the mutation of the EU is timed about the same as the crash-and-burn of the middle class in the US.
Which of our esteemed POTUSes signed off on the Lisbon treaty--wasn't that Obama?
Anything pushed to the
Anything pushed to the extreme is dangerous, nationalism and globalism is no different. Globalism can produce benefits such as open travel and jobs in Europe. It all comes down to controlling the greed. If economic programs and trade deals are written to allow everyone to participate globalism can be a good thing. This is the message that Bernie has been spreading for years. Unfortunately those in power around the world have used both nationalism and globalism to control workers globally.
Trump is beginning to tack to the left in trade in the aftermath of Brexit.
If Sander's, Stein and Trump are out against TPP and bad trade deals the neoliberal press will now begin to struggle to get the message out.
So for instance you have this:
http://www.vox.com/2016/6/25/12029786/brexit-uk-eu-immigration-xenophobia
The argument here is that since there's no correlation between income change and a vote for Leave, we can then wrap things up and say that it's all irrational xenophobia. The implied argument within that argument is that everything must have been totally kewl with the economic situation with the masses as a whole over those nice neoliberal years, an argument not tested by this paper.
“The Democrats and Republicans want you to believe they are mortal enemies engaged in a desperate struggle when all the time, they are partners with a power-sharing agreement.” - Richard Moser
Counterpunch?
So a bunch of American radicals are purporting to say what British politics is all about. Why not read the Morning Star for the view of the CPGB?
There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know.
Damn right, Counterpunch!
There's always good stuff there for a "radical" like me.
Thank you for ignoring all the points of this essay and doing a TOP.
Counterpunch has been excellent since Alex Cockburn
started the print-only CounterPunch years ago. Though he's passed away, it's still good, in my view.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
For someone as obsessed with Feudalism as you...
anyone who believes in democracy must seem like a radical.
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
<nt>
There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know.
excellent essay
I am not sure exactly how Brexit will work out for the British people. It is easy to accuse the people of being low information or xenophobic. But these two sentences beautifully sum up what the neo-liberals really wish for the people to forget.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
These are not the first people to want to
…Eat their cake, and have it too.
In my view, nationalism is useful in rallying colonized
and oppressed people against global economic terror. There should always be the understanding that this is but a stage for working people to link up internationally against the neoliberal owners of most of the world's economy.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
Of course the markets were up
They spent all last week pricing in a Remain win, so there was a drop when Leave won. Now that the drop (which makes no sense when you look at what actually changed between Thursday and Friday, especially for most companies in the US market) has corrected, it'll start going back up.
What goes up must come down
Global corporations have been playing "pump and dump" games with the stock market for decades and spending earnings on stock buy backs to artificially inflate stock prices and create artificial stock increases to maximize bonuses.
The fundamentals of the global neoliberal economy are very shakey. The "Brexit blowback" was a symptom of an unstable global economic system that runs on smoke and mirrors.
Things are going to get much worse before they get better. Get ready for the economic roller coaster. It will be one hell of a ride.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
DOW is up another 200 points today
After the 270 point rally yesterday.
Where is this End-Of-The-World thing we've been promised if they pass Brexit?
FTSE 100 now back to pre-Brexit levels
I guess I must have blinked and missed the end of the world.
Maybe that was hype by the big Wall Street players
To drive down stocks so they could buy them in huge numbers and drive up the price and sell. So much effort is being put into manipulating us that it's hard not to be wary.
Beware the bullshit factories.
DOW now up nearly 300 points today
Now the Obama administration is in favor of the UK
ruling class "walking back" the expressed will of the people.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
Of course!
He's ignored the vote and the will of the people since he was elected, and all he got was 8 years in the WH, a pension, and a huge mansion to crash in until his daughter finishes her fancy school.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Yes, as reported in the Guardian, Sec'y of State Kerry
said that there were a number of ways the vote to leave could be walked back. He has been on a hand-holding mission to Cameron and his right wing government.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
My prediction...
He will get a nice, cushy position in the Clinton Foundation where he can make 1/2 mil a year engaging in graft (ed) disguised as 'charity'.
Democrats, we tried to warn you. How is that guilt and shame working out?
And so many speeches at $250,000 a pop.
Goldman, etc. They want to show that they reward their lackeys so that the next set of politicians will fall in line.
The Elites have had enough of your crap
It's time you peasants learned you place
That's just too damned bad for the Elites
the peasants have had enough of their bullshit and their lies.
PS. THIS:
Apparently they've been breathing the fumes of the rarefied air of the 1% for too long, because they're too stupid to understand that WE GET IT NOW that they're liars and hypocrites.
Holy Crap! Sane vs. Mindlessly Angry??
I'm legitimately, fully mindfully angry! And not at all nationalistic. I get everyone wants to play this as racist xenophobes vs. worldly cultured globalists, but that is not what's happening. How is it that they absolutely refuse to see there are legitimate critiques to be made of globalism as it is now. This writer even acknowledges the economic causes in the paragraph below, then goes on to pretend its the racist nationalists vs the sane pragmatists.
How can someone write the first paragraph, which acknowledges this is largely about economic inequality at root, and then write the second paragraph which pretends it's actually about "defending sovereignty"?
Binary Eliminates Nuance and is Highly Manipulative.
You can be a good little global citizen or you can be a dirty nationalist.
Your choice.
Binary political decisions and rhetoric often have cognitive dissonance baked in. The fact that it's becoming easier to see the false dichotomy is not good for the Masters of the Universe, and as an extension, not good for global populations.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
Sir, You Look Like the Pissboy. You Look Like a Bucket of Shit!*
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
Global Leadership is Un-Believable at This Time in History.
It is obvious that they are full of shit and working for the Masters of the Universe.
The State have, long ago, broken from the People in most Western countries, and as a result, nobody of less than massive wealth matters at all.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
Slovak PM sez
EU must change
Brexit raises doubts over saber-rattling with Russia
Think about the sabers!
Who on earth thinks expanding NATO to the Russian border
especially when promises were made not to, is a good idea? It's a bad idea.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
HRC
chuck utzman
TULSI 2020
Shocking,
isn't it?
(/droll snark)
binaries will fail
and there was no way that either 'side in this vote was 'right'. both sides have legitimate grievances, but in an age of binary analysis, the wrong conclusions are constantly reached.
did 9 months in California prison, because Neoliberal Democrats and GOP maggots work together to profit off the drug war
Is it just me
or do the parallels between Corbyn and Bernie continue. The party attacking its own left and siding with the 'enemy'. The heroes being forced out, but waiting for a potential investigatory bombshell to devastate the party establishment. In Cobyn's case it's the Chilicot report on the lead up to the Iraq Occupation, which he can release on July 6th, which may end up getting Blair charged as a war criminal. It has the same sort of insanely obvious yet inconceivable tang of Hillary being indicted for ... anything really. Corbyn's hand is stronger, but the brexit-vote shock may also influence superdelegates.
Apparently the brexit vote is just the convenient occasion for the long-planned removal of Corbyn:
Good point
I hadn't considered that Corbyn just has to fight off the neoliberals until July 7.