Brussels sprouts


It's all the fault of the USA


by André Brie


The author is deputy of the European Parliament, where he belongs to the fraction of the United European Left (GUE/NGL).


If you believe the picture drawn by most media, the USA are to blame for the current global financial and economic crisis. Most European politicians have adopted the new anti-Americanism. However, the current situation is by no means an “accident“ or the consequence of irresponsible action of individuals or solely of the USA. Of course, there is no doubt that the policy that led to the current disaster was begun in the USA. However, there still need to be added substantial touches to the picture drawn even by German government members and their European colleagues.


As a matter of fact, the deepest and also the least-discussed cause, even within the Left, of the breakdown is the policy of massive redistribution from below to the top, even and in particular in Europe. In the past three decades, it has led to the accumulation of gigantic financial means in very few hands and it has at the same time hurt mass consumption. At the top, there was more and more disposable liquid capital that it was hard to invest in reasonable ways into the real economy, below there was less and less money for consumption. The US government and, partly even more strongly, the West European governments created new markets for this capital abundance: in the financial area itself, last but not least by casino capitalism, by the privatisation of public enterprises and services, by an aggressive free trade capitalism. It was only by these conditions of exploitation that the “greed“ of the managers, share and funds owners was able to unload itself.


Moreover, a very active German and European policy promoted the liberalisation of the financial markets. In fact, the Maastricht Treaty (1992) introduced a radical monetarism. The European Central Bank was withdrawn from any political and macroeconomic control. In 1999, the EU Commission decided the plan for financial services with forty liberalisation measures that the European governments implemented with the Lisbon Strategy starting in 2000. Added to that is the fact that the EU reacted just as passively to the course of the USA, which by their financial and imperial war policy built up a debt economy, as to the intransparence of the international financial markets, but that it contributed actively, however, to the deregulation of the financial markets.


We need not wait for solutions for the USA. In particular, the European scopes for manoeuvre are great. What is required in the EU is, in particular, the ending of the Lisbon strategy, the wage and corporate tax competition among states, of social demolition, of deregulation and privatisation and redistribution of social wealth towards the top. “Casino capitalism“ needs to be really controlled – empty sales, credit derivatives, and hedge-funds must be interdicted all over Europe, tax allowances and advantages for financial speculation must be eliminated. There also must be stopped the privatisation of old-age prevention, the European firm pensions directive must be changed fundamentally.


Large private banks who no longer fulfil their economic policy role and insurance companies belong under state control or into state hands. And last but not least, there would be required strong European and national business recovery programmes, which would strengthen mass purchasing power and the interior market, would lower the insecurity of the wage dependent, the unemployed and the pensioneers, promote regional economic circuits, local small and medium-type businesses and the urgently required ecological reconstruction.