Workers Solidarity Movement

We want to make the 1% rich pay, not the compromise of 'fairer' cuts.
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions have called a national demonstration on 27th November in Dublin which will see tens of thousands take to the streets. But many are very unhappy with the ICTU leadership and a march called on the basis of 'fairer' cuts and a return to the disastrous policy of Social Partnership. The 1% Network will be taking part in the demonstration - not to support the demands of the ICTU leadership, but to outline what we see as the alternative. This is not in the expectation that the ICTU leadership can be convinced but because we want to make the argument to the thousands of workers who will take part that it is up to all of us to organise what is needed, a general strike, despite that leadership.

Anarkismo.net has announced that a demonstration is being held in Paris, France tomorrow to coincide with the ICTU demonstration in Dublin under the slogan of 'Solidarity with the Irish people'.  The demonstrations called by 8 French organisations will be taking place at the European Union offices of bld Saint Germain, the organisers include the WSM's sister Anarkismo group in France, Alternative Libertaire.

Recently bond holders in Anglo Irish Banks agreed to a voluntary reduction to 20% of face value on 2017 junior bonds.  This morning the ISDA Determiniation Comittee (International Swaps and Derivatives Association) announced that this constituted a restructuring credit event, triggering CDSs (Credit Default Swaps) on Anglo Irish Bank.  Restructuring credit events trigger what is known as the "Small Bang Protocol" for CDSs which cover some events which are not complete defaults.

With the IMF in Ireland, a WSM member has written a song of 'welcome', a recording of which and the lyrics of which are below.  For international readers "céad míle fáilte" means "A Hundred Thousand Welcomes" and is a traditional greeting now strongly associated with the tourist industry.  You can read WSM articles about the IMF intervention and the economic crash that led to it in our Capitalist Crisis article listing.

Céad míle fáilte - To the IMF 
We hope we meet you on the streets - To fight you to the death. 
And we know how you got here - Back room deal and open arms 
As you try to suck the life from us - With your structural reforms

Eric Cantona, French actor and former footballer, has recently been calling for a run on the banks.  The idea is that the bankers generated this crisis and since our democratic institutions are either incapable or unwilling to hold the bankers accountable, we should take matters into our own hands.

Why is the director of the IMF complaining that the rate of progress of the IMF negotiations in Dublin is going too slowly? What's wrong with this picture? The answer is nothing, so long as you understand that the IMF are not the driving force in these negotiations.

Despite the newpaper headlines, what is happening is not an IMF bailout. This is a European debt restructuring process in which the IMF are playing a merely supportive role as consultants. This is a Eurozone process and although the political masters of the Eurozone, through their EU Commissioners, have the final say on passing or vetoing the final agreement, the true driving force behind this process is the ECB.

It's now official, the Irish state is in talks with the EU and the IMF about a so called 'rescue plan' to bail out the Irish capitalist class from the disaster created by the international crash of the capitalist economic system. A crisis that was magnified in Ireland by the corruption of local crony capitalism on the one hand and the dependency of the economy on 'globalization' on the other. Trapped between such a cast of crooks and idiots it is perhaps not surprising that many in Ireland hope things will be improved when the running of our lives will be handed over to those who many hope might have a clue.

Last Friday we reported on the mounting crisis of Ireland's sovereign debt bond yields. Particularly how the announcement of Lenihan's "Shock and Awe" 6 bn cuts plan had failed to move the markets.  This week, as bond yields have moved from the business pages onto the front page, the search for an explanation for this failure began. By the middle of the week, the story was set - blame the Germans!

The purpose of this text is to try and tell the story of our current economic situation, how we got here, and what we can expect from the near future, so as to better understand the tasks facing us.

This is neither an academic text on history, nor yet, god forbid, a treatise on macroeconomics. So in the interests of telling a listenable story we will use the old storytelling technique of jumping directly into the middle and exploring outwards in flashback and flash-forward vignettes to build the big picture. But where is the middle?