The Market’s Coup d’État

The worst coups d’état are those that are imperceptible, those that at the onset are difficult to identify, that don’t permit us to take the right measures at the right time. The ambushes are so disguised (risk premiums, rating agencies, opaque investments, unpunished “black-hole banking"...) that it’s very hard to recognize them until the situation is practically irreversible. And not only do they debilitate the State and create hard-to-compensate social inequalities, but they have also dared to install governments in power without holding elections, under the gaze of our passive and perplexed citizens. 

With great skill they are able to achieve their objective of “less government and more market". Politicians and parliamentarians discredit themselves, especially when there are no corrective mechanisms to counteract majority governments that are constantly passing “rolling pin” laws. And the market’s “coup d’état” achieves its goal to privatize everything... including political parties. 

The large financial consortia that are responsible for this crisis are constantly hounding those who, at a given moment in history, agreed to replace democratic principles with the laws of the markets, and international institutions for the groups of plutocrats that have done so much damage, particularly in the western world. This is a systemic crisis that requires solid leaders, capable of explaining to the citizens what happens, and designing clear strategies for the future. 

What’s certain is that as soon as they were “rescued”, bankruptcies began to emerge with no explanation of the reasons for these incredible accumulated deficits. Where did the rescue funds go? What is really our present status? Who were those who were incapable of perceiving what was happening while there was still time to prevent or at least mitigate the serious consequences? 

As Ignacio Ramonet has observed, public services are silently being privatized, despite the fact that the outrages committed have largely been alleviated with public funds and much sacrifice on the part of the majority of citizens. 

The “great domain” rules a great part of the West, while none other than Latin America, India... are skillfully escaping the last throes of the globalizers. 

The solution lies in genuine democracy that will rapidly prompt a re-founding of the United Nations System and the immediate disbanding of the G8 and G20; genuine democracy that will immediately amend the Treaties of the European Union, so that a political, economic and fiscal federation coupled with autonomy in security matters may enable the Union to function properly, so that 27 countries don’t necessarily have to march to the drum of just one; and on the local level, in all of those countries in which the parliaments are discredited for following out-dated rules of popular representation, and in which the governments don’t keep the campaign promises that prompted their election, genuine democracy that will be strengthened by returning to the ethical values that were replaced by commercial ones, to enable them, with the necessary indispensable national consensus, to face our present challenges, putting those responsible for the coup d’état, once unmasked, in their proper place. 

Only then will we be able to counteract these “coups d’état” on the part of the markets at the international, European and national levels...