Well it is hot off the press - the Declaration of the Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy. The Texas Two Step was executed brilliantly. Step one; manufacture chaos. Step two; reap the rewards. Prime Minster Stephen Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty lined up in behind the Bush-Paulson tag team and declared that it would, “give the market some reassurance”. Help was on the way for Wall St., Bay St., financial markets, investment bankers, hedge fund managers, stock market investors and speculators. Working people and organized labour were not mentioned in the declaration.
The world can now breath a collective sigh of relief, the geniuses of finance have crafted a coordinated economic rescue package that is sure to pull the world from the abyss and provide the tools required to mitigate new crises. Backslapping, high-fives and champagne toasts all around. Well done boys!
What does the declaration say? The 3635 word report declared that basically it is business as usual. Along with the usual financial buzz words and pledges to ‘get it right’ next time, the need for renewed fiscal discipline, prudent oversight and similar hot air, the declaration was brazenly conniving and openly manipulative.
The declaration will be touted as the greatest achievement to date of the virtues and strength of unfettered capitalism. Harper will peddle it to the Canadian people as a great accomplishment and evidence of the strength of capitalism to do what is necessary to save the financial system. I am sure that auto workers in St. Thomas will be overjoyed. I can almost hear them now popping the corks on the bubbly.
Quoting from the US managed G20 declaration, national and regional authorities and Finance Ministers should:
· Ensure that the IMF, World Bank and other MDBs have sufficient resources;
· Encourage expanded trade in financial products and services;
· Protect the integrity of the world’s financial markets by bolstering investor protection;
· Respect jurisdictions that have yet to commit to international standards with respect to bank secrecy and transparency;
· Enhance cross border capital flows;
· Reform of Bretton Woods Institutions in order to increase their legitimacy;
· Draw upon the recommendations of eminent independent experts;
· Remain committed to energy security, the rule of law and the fight against terrorism;
· Review proposals by private sector bodies that have developed best practices for private capital pools and/or hedge funds;
· Review bankruptcy laws to ensure that they permit an orderly wind-down of large complex cross-border financial institutions;
· Ensure that financial institutions maintain adequate capital in amounts necessary to sustain confidence;
· Create strong liquidity cushions;
· Monitor substantial changes in asset prices and their implications for the macroeconomy and the financial system;
· Review business conduct rules to protect markets and investors;
· Implement national and international measures that protect the global financial system from uncooperative and non-transparent jurisdictions;
· Review the adequacy of the resources of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank Group and other multilateral development banks and stand ready to increase them where necessary.
So let me get this straight; give billions more dollars to the IMF so that unelected appointed foreign consultants can advise the Canadian Finance Minister how to expand financial products and services while at the same time ensuring that Canadian banks a fully topped up with taxpayer money, so that Canada can continue the unencumbered flow of energy resources to the US through NAFTA, so that Canada can remain committed to the fight against terror...in Afghanistan I presume. Hum...sounds like the old plan.
On this basis the declaration said that the role of the IMF ‘would be strengthened”. The declaration reaffirmed its commitment to free market capitalism. It stated that it is the, “shared belief that market principles, open trade and investment regimes, and effectively regulated financial markets foster the dynamism, innovation, and entrepreneurship that are essential for economic growth, employment, and poverty reduction.” The declaration went on to say that these principles, “have lifted millions out of poverty, and have significantly raised the global standard of living.”
This is just a small sample the ‘new’ neo-liberal policies of regulated markets and oversight. These formulations will fall under the control and be managed by the same, in fact strengthened, financial mechanisms such as the IMF, World Trade Organization and the World Bank that has generated this Made in USA crisis. The Canadian people need to ask Prime Minister Harper; has he been given a mandate to implement such a regime in Canada? It can only mean more unemployment, despair and misery for Canadian working families.
The same day as the Washington Summit by the G20 leaders, venezuelanalysis.com reported that, “Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez handed over credits to over a thousand communal banks, he highlighted the need for social networks of distribution and for the private banks to also contribute.” The funds allotted to communal banks in 2008 tripled from 2007 to $1.6 billion US. Chavez also said that he was prepared to make an agreement with the private banks so that an additional fund by the private banks could be setup and raise the total fund to $3.3 billion US.
The report went on to say:
“Chavez noted the irony that while large, small and medium sized banks are collapsing around the world as a result of the financial crisis, Venezuela is ‘giving birth to thousands of banks that are banks of the people, the communal banks, the banks for popular power... and [this] popular power is vital for the future of the revolution... so this ...can't fail’."
Chavez noted that the proceeds from the communal banks must not go into the speculative markets. President Chavez rejects the notion that goods that cost 1 bolivar to produce should not cost 30 after it makes its way through the speculative market.
The Venezuealananlaysis.com reported that Chavez said that giving money to the communal banks is one way of redistributing and breaking the power that was "in the hands of the bourgeoisie who controlled the resources of the country...they managed the whole economy."
This is a tale of two banking systems; the Texas Two Step or the Venezuelan Communal Tango. Canadian workers are in need of the tango. But then again, Harper only has one partner; the US, he only has one move; the Sell-Out Two Step and he is no Chavez.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
The Texas Two Step - Harper Dances, Canadian Workers Pay
Friday, November 14, 2008
Stop Playing Footsy with Monopoly Capital
A month ago, on October 9, 2008, Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach travelled to Toronto to deliver a speech to the Economic Club of Ontario where, with the usual provincialism, he lauded the benefits of Alberta’s oil sands for Canada.
The importance the Premier’s comments were not the fact that Alberta, according to the Centre for the Study of Living Standards (CSLS,) makes up 18% of Canada’s tangible wealth, 61% of Canada’s natural resources wealth and a valuation 3.5 times greater than all the fixed capital assets of Canada’s manufacturing sector. Stelmach’s comments are not significant because he listed an inventory of the economic benefits for Canada or what Alberta is doing to ‘protect the environment’. They were significant because his comments were a political statement to Ontario manufacturing capital. Not only were Stelmach’s comments a political statement, they were also an indictment on the failures of ‘market capitalism’.
In the light of G20 meetings in Washington, convened to provide a ‘coordinated’ response to the deepening capitalist depression, Stelmach unwittingly provides a thorough argument for public ownership, management and development of Canada’s energy resources. In fact Stelmach makes the case for nationalization of the oil monopolies as a way out of the economic crisis.
Coordinated Response of Public Wealth
In the lead up to the G20 summit US President George Bush said in a speech to the Manhattan Institute in New York that the ‘global meltdown’ was not a failure of capitalism. US Treasury Secretary Paulson’s bank bailout has been totally discredited as a blatant transfer of public money into banks coffers, and that the money is nothing more than a pork barrel for the most rapacious sections of finance and industrial capital to feed from. Predictably Harper and Flaherty lined up with Washington providing a similar economic ‘plan’ for Canadian banks. Harper and Flaherty, along with their oil lieutenant Stelmach, continue unabated in the transfer of Canadian resource wealth to US industry and remain committed to do Canada’s share of the heavy lifting - using public money and Canadian resources of course.
Taking the Bush lead, Flaherty said in a Financial Times op-ed on November 14, 2008 that, “The open market system did not fail in this crisis.” Finance Minster Flaherty suggested that a return to the economic theories of Adam Smith is what is called for. Harper for his part, suggested that the coordinated response to capitalism’s recent ‘successes’ is to find a ‘balanced approach’ with the other industrial powers. Harper’s prescription, as reported in a November 14, 2008 Globe and Mail article, is to unite imperialism in methods to ‘generate global growth’. Harper contends that the way out of the crisis for the imperialist powers must include “measures by Asian countries and others with high savings rates to provide economic stimulus”. In other words the major industrial economies must line up and coordinate the looting of ‘Asian’ workers’ savings and pension funds. China remains the target.
Organized Labour’s Efforts
What is organized labour’s response to the G20 meetings? The AFL-CIO released the ‘Washington Declaration’ ahead of the G20 meetings in Washington. Shut out of the Washington meeting by the G20 leaders, the AFL-CIO is hosting a meeting of union leaders in conjunction with G20 meetings. The declaration is the policy statement of the 3 union meeting sponsors on the response to the economic crisis. The sponsors are the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (TUAC-OECD) and Global Unions.
The World Federation of Trade Unions has not been invited to the meetings (WFTU). In fact as part of the declaration and indication of the willingness by the international unions to work for ‘financial banking stability’ in the industrialized nations, and to “have a seat at the table” it added that, “Just as the post-World War II economic settlements included the strengthening of the International Labour Organisation (ILO)… the new post-crisis settlement must address international economic governance”.
The ILO after WWII sided with the imperialist powers and split from the WFTU as part of the new economic world order following Bretton Woods and the Churchill’s Fulton speech in a ‘coordinated’ effort to defeat the ‘Soviet threat’. The Washington Declaration says, “…governments and international institutions must establish a new economic order that is economically efficient and socially just – a task as ambitious as that confronted by the meeting in Bretton Woods in 1944”.
The Washington Declaration outlines the analysis of organized labour in the industrialized nations and lists the tasks needed by the international financial community to “ensure stable and cost-effective financing of productive investment in the real economy”. The labour’s declaration reiterated calls by the major financial geniuses of the industrial powers for a coordinated recovery plan, regulated global financial markets, implementation of a new international system of economic governance and provisions for some redistribution of wealth.
The declaration while calling for “an end to an ideology of unfettered financial markets” and saying that, “those who are losing homes, jobs and pensions as a result of the financial crisis, for which they bear no responsibility, as taxpayers are being called on to bail-out those who are responsible” and that “large parts of the financial system are being supported by the public taxpayer, trade unions insist that governments take equity stakes” also says that the interventions by the central banks and governments are “necessary to save the banking system”.
The Washington Declaration concluded by saying that, “Working people require a seat at the table in these meetings and institutions. They have little confidence that bankers and governments meeting behind closed doors will get it right this time. There must be full transparency, disclosure and consultation. The Global Union organisations are ready to play their role in this process.”
The response by Harper and Flaherty was predictable and a blatant toadying to the discredited neo-con Bush-Paulson tag team demand to tow the line. The AFL-CIO and the Global Unions pledged that they will do likewise and play their role in the necessary process of ‘saving the banking system’ in exchange for a seat at the table and a larger role in the new international economic order. All the pieces are in place the coordinated response is ready.
Alberta, Canada and the Material Base
Bush’s speech was a political statement of both the objectives of US finance capital and demands of US imperialism for other major powers to fall into line under the leadership of US capital. Bush’s speech was an indictment on the failure of capitalism.
So what does all this have to do with Alberta and Stelmach’s speech to the Economic Club of Ontario? Similarly Stelmach took a similar approach in Toronto. While extolling the virtues of the oil sands and parroting Harper’s ‘energy superpower’ thesis (now renamed ‘clean energy superpower’), Stelmach admitted that these achievements were due to public demands for regulation and workers’ efforts in constructing them. Gushing with the enthusiasm of a used car salesman at the ‘achievements’ of the Alberta energy sector in environmental stewardship, Stelmach without thinking admitted that all the ‘achievements’ by the oil monopolies in introducing new technologies for environmental protection came under the ‘strict’ adherence to governmental standards and regulations - hardly a ringing endorsement of market capitalism.
It is widely agreed that while the Alberta Government speaks of the leadership it shows in protecting the environment, oil monopolies continue to pursue extraction and production methods that flagrantly violate and disregard even the most minimal of standards. It is widely accepted that the standards that the Alberta government have put in place are far from adequate. None the less it also speaks to the fact that Governments must appear to not only be ‘involved’ but mandate controls over monopoly capital.
Stelmach explaining to the Toronto industrialists that the Canadian Energy Research Institute will report shortly “that 2.5million jobs will be created, mostly in Canada, by oil sands development” (the report was released on November 10th, unfortunately the $7500 price tag is out of reach of this author) also reminded the Toronto hosts that, “these resources give our country strategic assets of growing importance.”
Stelmach pointed that Ontario manufacturing is being supported to a large degree by the growth in the oil sands energy sector. The Premier identified that 388 Ontario companies with many employing more than a 1000 workers are benefiting from oil sands development. He went on to say that 44% of employment generated by the oil sands is outside of Alberta with a ‘significant chunk” in Ontario.
Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) president Gil McGowan in a November 2007 AFL op-ed entitled “No need to be sucked in by Big Oil’s Big Jobs Scare” discounted the hysteria and threats of job loss and ‘pulling out’ of Alberta being floated by the oil monopolies over the changes to the royalty regime introduced by the Stelmach Conservatives.
McGowan argued that because the industry is price driven and that “the price for oil is clearly going nowhere but up”, that other jurisdictions are raising royalty rates, that the changes made to royalty rates really don’t amount to all that much and finally that “80% of the worlds proven petroleum reserves are under the control of national oil companies – and thus out of reach for Big Oil”.
The AFL president reasons therefore that if anyone is over a barrel it is Big Oil and that the bargaining power is in the hands of Albertans. Citing former Alberta Premier Lougheed, Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams and Republican Vice-Presidential candidate and Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin as examples of hard bargainers to be emulated, McGowan concludes that aggressive bargaining will not scare Big Oil off because they have nowhere else to go.
Brother McGowan complained that “that steps are needed to stop unrefined bitumen from being shipped to upgraders and refineries in the U.S.” and asserted that “as a labour leader, I would be the first to raise the alarm if I thought thousands of jobs might actually be lost in Alberta. But, I frankly don’t buy Big Oil’s scare tactics – and neither should the government.”
Let’s fast forward to November 2008 as the world is gripped in a deepening economic depression with 100’s of thousands of Canadian jobs being lost, manufacturing being dismantled and a massive curtailment of oil sands projects and investment. In fact the only real sector of investment in Alberta proceeding at the same rate is the construction of pipeline capacity to the US.
In a November 6, 2008 CLC Communiqué President Ken Georgetti wrote to Prime Minister Stephen Harper “once again asking for a meeting before the prime minister travels to Washington next week for a G-20 Summit with other world leaders about the economic crisis.” Harpers response was no chance. The consolation prize? Georgetti will meet instead with representatives of the Obama presidential team.
In a November 14, 2008 Vancouver Sun op-ed Georgetti exclaimed, “Leaders of the international labour movement, including myself, will be in Washington to press our own ideas for real change. We will be meeting with the head of the International Monetary Fund and with representatives of President-elect Obama's transition team. We expect that the world's political leaders will finally heed the voice of labour.” Problem solved. Although as the CLC President pointed out, “I don't expect for a minute that the G-20 heads of government will solve the problems of the world in a single day. What I do hope is that they, our Prime Minister included, see the need for a real change of direction in the troubled days ahead.”
Hope, expectations, needed solutions, the voice of labour...blah, blah, blah. Organized labour needs to say what no one has the courage to say – capitalism is a failed system and does not have anything to offer working people except more misery, hardship and job loss. Demand public control of primary industry.
Now is the time for organized labour to heed its own declarations of playing hardball. Advance a program of national industrialization and demand the nationalization of primary industry beginning with energy and to bring the banks under strict control and provide capital for that development. It is the time to mobilize workers in local committees and bring the full weight of labour to bear on market capitalism.
Stelmach unwittingly advocates for public control as the only way to enforce environmental protection. Paulson advocates for public bailouts. Flaherty provides public protection for the banks by off-loading $75 billion from bank balance sheets onto the public. Harper advocates looting of Asian workers’ pensions and savings as a way out. It is not labour’s role to help monopoly capital in their coordinated attack on foreign workers. All workers need protection.
Stop playing footsy with monopoly capital whimpering cap-in-hand for respect and a seat at the table accepting consolations prizes and demand that if monopoly capital will not provide relief for Canadian working families to get out of the way and the people of Canada will develop the 18% of wealth stored in the dirt of Alberta. Advance labour’s program with the voice of labour – a million workers feet!
The importance the Premier’s comments were not the fact that Alberta, according to the Centre for the Study of Living Standards (CSLS,) makes up 18% of Canada’s tangible wealth, 61% of Canada’s natural resources wealth and a valuation 3.5 times greater than all the fixed capital assets of Canada’s manufacturing sector. Stelmach’s comments are not significant because he listed an inventory of the economic benefits for Canada or what Alberta is doing to ‘protect the environment’. They were significant because his comments were a political statement to Ontario manufacturing capital. Not only were Stelmach’s comments a political statement, they were also an indictment on the failures of ‘market capitalism’.
In the light of G20 meetings in Washington, convened to provide a ‘coordinated’ response to the deepening capitalist depression, Stelmach unwittingly provides a thorough argument for public ownership, management and development of Canada’s energy resources. In fact Stelmach makes the case for nationalization of the oil monopolies as a way out of the economic crisis.
Coordinated Response of Public Wealth
In the lead up to the G20 summit US President George Bush said in a speech to the Manhattan Institute in New York that the ‘global meltdown’ was not a failure of capitalism. US Treasury Secretary Paulson’s bank bailout has been totally discredited as a blatant transfer of public money into banks coffers, and that the money is nothing more than a pork barrel for the most rapacious sections of finance and industrial capital to feed from. Predictably Harper and Flaherty lined up with Washington providing a similar economic ‘plan’ for Canadian banks. Harper and Flaherty, along with their oil lieutenant Stelmach, continue unabated in the transfer of Canadian resource wealth to US industry and remain committed to do Canada’s share of the heavy lifting - using public money and Canadian resources of course.
Taking the Bush lead, Flaherty said in a Financial Times op-ed on November 14, 2008 that, “The open market system did not fail in this crisis.” Finance Minster Flaherty suggested that a return to the economic theories of Adam Smith is what is called for. Harper for his part, suggested that the coordinated response to capitalism’s recent ‘successes’ is to find a ‘balanced approach’ with the other industrial powers. Harper’s prescription, as reported in a November 14, 2008 Globe and Mail article, is to unite imperialism in methods to ‘generate global growth’. Harper contends that the way out of the crisis for the imperialist powers must include “measures by Asian countries and others with high savings rates to provide economic stimulus”. In other words the major industrial economies must line up and coordinate the looting of ‘Asian’ workers’ savings and pension funds. China remains the target.
Organized Labour’s Efforts
What is organized labour’s response to the G20 meetings? The AFL-CIO released the ‘Washington Declaration’ ahead of the G20 meetings in Washington. Shut out of the Washington meeting by the G20 leaders, the AFL-CIO is hosting a meeting of union leaders in conjunction with G20 meetings. The declaration is the policy statement of the 3 union meeting sponsors on the response to the economic crisis. The sponsors are the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (TUAC-OECD) and Global Unions.
The World Federation of Trade Unions has not been invited to the meetings (WFTU). In fact as part of the declaration and indication of the willingness by the international unions to work for ‘financial banking stability’ in the industrialized nations, and to “have a seat at the table” it added that, “Just as the post-World War II economic settlements included the strengthening of the International Labour Organisation (ILO)… the new post-crisis settlement must address international economic governance”.
The ILO after WWII sided with the imperialist powers and split from the WFTU as part of the new economic world order following Bretton Woods and the Churchill’s Fulton speech in a ‘coordinated’ effort to defeat the ‘Soviet threat’. The Washington Declaration says, “…governments and international institutions must establish a new economic order that is economically efficient and socially just – a task as ambitious as that confronted by the meeting in Bretton Woods in 1944”.
The Washington Declaration outlines the analysis of organized labour in the industrialized nations and lists the tasks needed by the international financial community to “ensure stable and cost-effective financing of productive investment in the real economy”. The labour’s declaration reiterated calls by the major financial geniuses of the industrial powers for a coordinated recovery plan, regulated global financial markets, implementation of a new international system of economic governance and provisions for some redistribution of wealth.
The declaration while calling for “an end to an ideology of unfettered financial markets” and saying that, “those who are losing homes, jobs and pensions as a result of the financial crisis, for which they bear no responsibility, as taxpayers are being called on to bail-out those who are responsible” and that “large parts of the financial system are being supported by the public taxpayer, trade unions insist that governments take equity stakes” also says that the interventions by the central banks and governments are “necessary to save the banking system”.
The Washington Declaration concluded by saying that, “Working people require a seat at the table in these meetings and institutions. They have little confidence that bankers and governments meeting behind closed doors will get it right this time. There must be full transparency, disclosure and consultation. The Global Union organisations are ready to play their role in this process.”
The response by Harper and Flaherty was predictable and a blatant toadying to the discredited neo-con Bush-Paulson tag team demand to tow the line. The AFL-CIO and the Global Unions pledged that they will do likewise and play their role in the necessary process of ‘saving the banking system’ in exchange for a seat at the table and a larger role in the new international economic order. All the pieces are in place the coordinated response is ready.
Alberta, Canada and the Material Base
Bush’s speech was a political statement of both the objectives of US finance capital and demands of US imperialism for other major powers to fall into line under the leadership of US capital. Bush’s speech was an indictment on the failure of capitalism.
So what does all this have to do with Alberta and Stelmach’s speech to the Economic Club of Ontario? Similarly Stelmach took a similar approach in Toronto. While extolling the virtues of the oil sands and parroting Harper’s ‘energy superpower’ thesis (now renamed ‘clean energy superpower’), Stelmach admitted that these achievements were due to public demands for regulation and workers’ efforts in constructing them. Gushing with the enthusiasm of a used car salesman at the ‘achievements’ of the Alberta energy sector in environmental stewardship, Stelmach without thinking admitted that all the ‘achievements’ by the oil monopolies in introducing new technologies for environmental protection came under the ‘strict’ adherence to governmental standards and regulations - hardly a ringing endorsement of market capitalism.
It is widely agreed that while the Alberta Government speaks of the leadership it shows in protecting the environment, oil monopolies continue to pursue extraction and production methods that flagrantly violate and disregard even the most minimal of standards. It is widely accepted that the standards that the Alberta government have put in place are far from adequate. None the less it also speaks to the fact that Governments must appear to not only be ‘involved’ but mandate controls over monopoly capital.
Stelmach explaining to the Toronto industrialists that the Canadian Energy Research Institute will report shortly “that 2.5million jobs will be created, mostly in Canada, by oil sands development” (the report was released on November 10th, unfortunately the $7500 price tag is out of reach of this author) also reminded the Toronto hosts that, “these resources give our country strategic assets of growing importance.”
Stelmach pointed that Ontario manufacturing is being supported to a large degree by the growth in the oil sands energy sector. The Premier identified that 388 Ontario companies with many employing more than a 1000 workers are benefiting from oil sands development. He went on to say that 44% of employment generated by the oil sands is outside of Alberta with a ‘significant chunk” in Ontario.
Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) president Gil McGowan in a November 2007 AFL op-ed entitled “No need to be sucked in by Big Oil’s Big Jobs Scare” discounted the hysteria and threats of job loss and ‘pulling out’ of Alberta being floated by the oil monopolies over the changes to the royalty regime introduced by the Stelmach Conservatives.
McGowan argued that because the industry is price driven and that “the price for oil is clearly going nowhere but up”, that other jurisdictions are raising royalty rates, that the changes made to royalty rates really don’t amount to all that much and finally that “80% of the worlds proven petroleum reserves are under the control of national oil companies – and thus out of reach for Big Oil”.
The AFL president reasons therefore that if anyone is over a barrel it is Big Oil and that the bargaining power is in the hands of Albertans. Citing former Alberta Premier Lougheed, Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams and Republican Vice-Presidential candidate and Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin as examples of hard bargainers to be emulated, McGowan concludes that aggressive bargaining will not scare Big Oil off because they have nowhere else to go.
Brother McGowan complained that “that steps are needed to stop unrefined bitumen from being shipped to upgraders and refineries in the U.S.” and asserted that “as a labour leader, I would be the first to raise the alarm if I thought thousands of jobs might actually be lost in Alberta. But, I frankly don’t buy Big Oil’s scare tactics – and neither should the government.”
Let’s fast forward to November 2008 as the world is gripped in a deepening economic depression with 100’s of thousands of Canadian jobs being lost, manufacturing being dismantled and a massive curtailment of oil sands projects and investment. In fact the only real sector of investment in Alberta proceeding at the same rate is the construction of pipeline capacity to the US.
In a November 6, 2008 CLC Communiqué President Ken Georgetti wrote to Prime Minister Stephen Harper “once again asking for a meeting before the prime minister travels to Washington next week for a G-20 Summit with other world leaders about the economic crisis.” Harpers response was no chance. The consolation prize? Georgetti will meet instead with representatives of the Obama presidential team.
In a November 14, 2008 Vancouver Sun op-ed Georgetti exclaimed, “Leaders of the international labour movement, including myself, will be in Washington to press our own ideas for real change. We will be meeting with the head of the International Monetary Fund and with representatives of President-elect Obama's transition team. We expect that the world's political leaders will finally heed the voice of labour.” Problem solved. Although as the CLC President pointed out, “I don't expect for a minute that the G-20 heads of government will solve the problems of the world in a single day. What I do hope is that they, our Prime Minister included, see the need for a real change of direction in the troubled days ahead.”
Hope, expectations, needed solutions, the voice of labour...blah, blah, blah. Organized labour needs to say what no one has the courage to say – capitalism is a failed system and does not have anything to offer working people except more misery, hardship and job loss. Demand public control of primary industry.
Now is the time for organized labour to heed its own declarations of playing hardball. Advance a program of national industrialization and demand the nationalization of primary industry beginning with energy and to bring the banks under strict control and provide capital for that development. It is the time to mobilize workers in local committees and bring the full weight of labour to bear on market capitalism.
Stelmach unwittingly advocates for public control as the only way to enforce environmental protection. Paulson advocates for public bailouts. Flaherty provides public protection for the banks by off-loading $75 billion from bank balance sheets onto the public. Harper advocates looting of Asian workers’ pensions and savings as a way out. It is not labour’s role to help monopoly capital in their coordinated attack on foreign workers. All workers need protection.
Stop playing footsy with monopoly capital whimpering cap-in-hand for respect and a seat at the table accepting consolations prizes and demand that if monopoly capital will not provide relief for Canadian working families to get out of the way and the people of Canada will develop the 18% of wealth stored in the dirt of Alberta. Advance labour’s program with the voice of labour – a million workers feet!
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Harper’s Resource Sell-Out a Crime against the Canadian People
The Ottawa based Centre for the Study of Living Standards (CSLS) an economic policy research group released a research report on November 10, 2008 “The Valuation of the Alberta Oil Sands”. The CSLS report concludes that the Alberta Oil Sands make up 18% of Canada’s total tangible wealth. There has been very little commentary on the report to date.
The CSLS report is a very important study for a number of reasons. It establishes a number of criteria for estimating Canada’s primary energy reserves, it makes preliminary connections between development costs and social costs of carbon (SCC) and forms the basis for estimating and developing a program of public ownership of all primary resource and industry. It is the latter point that is essential for organized labour and the development of national industrial development program. The report, with careful study, illustrates the obvious necessity of bringing energy under public control as the material basis for the well being of Canadians.
CSLS concludes that previous estimates completed by Stats Canada were flawed. Stats Canada placed Canada’s total tangible wealth (TTW) to be $6.9 trillion. CSLS estimates that Canada’s TTW is now estimated to be $8.0 trillion. The authors of the CSLS report take issue with Stats Canada’s estimate of 22 billion barrels of reserves and place the total estimate to be almost 173 billion. The CSLS estimate is more in line with other international energy agencies that place total exploitable reserves with current technology at about 178 billion barrels. A full study of the report is essential for those that are serious about gaining a deeper understanding of the importance of the Alberta Oil Sands to the future of Canada.
What is striking and hits one immediately is that almost 20% of Canadian TTW is locked away in dirt! It is no wonder then that all focus is on the development of the oil sands. The CSLS authors conclude that per-capita wealth of Canadians increased by $34,591 to $243,950 or 16% above Stats Canada previous estimates.
Stats Canada’s national wealth accounts categorize tangible assets into produced and non-produced groups. Labour is an added component of the produced category whereas labour has not yet been applied to the non-produced category.
Produced assets include residential and non-residential structures, machinery and equipment, consumer durable goods, and businesses’ inventories. This category of assets has an embedded labour component or, in other words its value has been realized through work.
Non-produced assets include natural resources such as the oil sands, forests, minerals, and other naturally-occurring assets, in addition to land. These are commodities. Commodities have use-values that form the basis of all national wealth and which value can only be realized by the application of labour-power.
Total non-produced assets of Canadian TTW are estimated by Stats Canada to be $2.95 trillion. The CSLS estimate when the revaluation of oil sands is included is just under $4.1 trillion. What is more astounding is that the oil sands make up 61% of all natural resource wealth of Canada and 3.5 times the wealth of all manufacturing fixed capital assets in Canada. According to the CSLS report:
“The oil sands are a very important component of Canada’s wealth. According to official estimates, total tangible wealth in Canada in 2007 was $6.9 trillion. Using our preferred estimate, oil sands’ wealth is almost as important as wealth derived from land and is almost 7 times as important as wealth from all minerals. The oil sands are valued at almost the same level as residential structures and accounted in 2007 for 3.5 times more wealth than Canada’s capital stock in machinery and equipment. In other words, the oil sands, if valued appropriately, are a non-negligible portion of Canada’s tangible wealth.”
This report makes a farce of the Harper brain trust warning that Canada must find ways to “weather the storm” of economic crises, that Canada cannot afford national development programs in this crisis, etc., is a sham. Further, the curtailment of projects in Alberta by the oil monopolies claiming that the global crisis has changed the economic conditions for the development of the oil sands is suspect.
Alberta Oil Magazine.com carried a report on September 16, 2008 entitled, “Why Alberta Can’t Have It All”. The report by the on-line magazine reported on the cost differentials between bitumen processed by Alberta upgraders and costs related to the US Midwest production facilities where the majority of pipeline construction in this province is headed. The basis of the report was a presentation by Cliff Cook, senior vice-president of supply distribution and planning at Houston-based Marathon Oil Co., during an oil sands investment forum held in Calgary by TD Securities Inc. during the summer.
Cook’s presentation, “Midwest Solution versus Alberta Solution” concluded that, “Covering all the costs leaves the modified U.S. refinery with a profit margin of $3.74 per barrel of bitumen processed. That is 12.8 times more than the Alberta upgrader earns by barely running in the black at a margin of 29 cents per barrel.”
Taken in context of the CSLS findings it is no wonder why the flight of capital to lower cost jurisdictions is talking place – profits are 12.8 times higher in the US than in Alberta. Further the fact that 61% of Canadian natural wealth is locked in the oil sands means that US monopoly will be looking to get out of the made-in-US crisis on the backs of Canadian workers.
Questions of environmental protection issues seem trivial when 18% of Canadian TTW is under threat by US oil monopolies. There will be no material base left to make the transformation to a “green economy” if the sell-out by Harper is not halted.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Canadian Banks, Workers and the Farcical “Green Economy”
Global financial markets and the capitalist system are in the midst of a new cyclical, severe and deepening crisis. The crisis is being managed within the capitalist system and by the very same investor classes whose policies of wide open market capitalism are driving the world’s labouring masses into greater misery and untold hardship and ruin.
Canada, far from the reassurances of Prime Minister Harper, Finance Minister Flaherty and Bank of Canada Governor Carney, is neither immune and insulated nor are Canada’s big banks “fundamentally sound”. Close to half a million jobs have been wiped out in Canadian manufacturing, forestry is devastated, communications are undergoing harsh rationalization with 1300 jobs being axed by Nortel, energy investment is being radically scaled back with an almost total halt in oil sands projects in Alberta, house construction is in free fall with new home starts off over 50% since a year before, consumer spending has virtually stopped and agriculture; cattle, hogs and grain and barley is in crisis.
Canadian working families are under threat and on the verge of being totally ruined and thrown into life-long poverty and despair.
The destruction of the Canadian industrial economy is just the tip of a growing separation between real material production and finance capital speculation. Finance capital growth remains unabated. Finance and speculative capital is the dominant force and consideration within all proposed global financial solutions being bandied about by the leading capitalist nations. Speculative capital persists and entrenched in the planned “coordinated” global approach to crisis mitigation.
The “solutions” proposed by Finance Minster Flaherty ahead of the November G20 meetings in Brazil are described as “aggressive”. The minister announced today on behalf of Canadian people that he is transferring a further $50 billion in mortgages from the bank’s books to Canadian public via Flaherty’s “mortgage purchase program”, increasing the spread between what the Government of Canada lends banks and what the banks charge Canadians and a further $8 billion of public funds to the speculative money markets. Don Drummond Toronto Dominion Bank chief economist said that Flaherty’s measures “are exactly what the banks wanted”.
While Flaherty doles out billions to the banks in a global coordinated attack to “thaw” credit markets Canadian workers are losing jobs by the 10,000’s. The bank’s request for more public money was met by Flaherty with a willingness and eagerness more befitting a lap dog then a Canadian Finance Minster.
The solution to the economic crisis proposed by banking capital is; lend more money - period. Increasing the productive capacity of the nation is completely abandoned in favour of a continuation of the same speculative capital economy. It is within this context that the real needs of workers and those of the casino capitalists are brought into sharp relief when calls for industrial “suppression” are made by the environmentalists.
Canadian workers are asking the basic questions. Where is the productive basis for the massive introduction of renewable forms of energy to come from? With the wholesale destruction and transfer of Canadian industrial capacity to lower labour cost jurisdictions being carried out a feverish pace and the investment capital required, being used to prop up the remaining big 3 US banks, the ability of Canada to make this miraculous transformation to a “green economy” is farcical.
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