Comments on: “Can privatization kill?”

By: J lombardi

J lombardi — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 21:13:27 +0000

One of the greatest dangers of privatisation is the scandal of so-called freelance workers. Many people are exploited by unscrupulous companies, some of whom have lucrative contracts with EU institutions and bodies. It’s time we had a clear definition of what a freelance worker really is. At the moment for many companies it’s just a way of avoiding paying social charges and keeping wages low. Wake up at the Commission!!!

By: Erwin Black

Erwin Black — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 09:59:14 +0000

Do free markets, privatization, and open competition help limit corruption, as their advocates often argue? Or do they actually create new opportunities for graft and abuse? The political scientist Warner deserves credit for tackling these issues, but her study begs more questions than it answers. Warner looks at economic liberalization in the European Union over the past 20 years and suggests that the process not only has failed to root out corruption but has actually generated it as well. The book is full of detailed evidence of how European business and political leaders have continued to line their pockets even as the EU single market has progressed. The question, however, is, compared with what? Are EU member states more or less corrupt than before they began to liberalize? How do their levels of corruption compare with those of other advanced industrial countries? How do they compare with those of less integrated or less economically liberal states? (Rather well, actually, according to Transparency International.) These issues are inherently difficult to research, but Warner’s sweeping implication (that the EU integration process has made the member states more corrupt) is far stronger than her actual conclusion (that the free market “may not be sufficient to root out corruption”).

The Best System Money Can Buy: Corruption in the European Union, by Carolyn M. Warner

Contents
Introduction
1 Corruption Dynamics in the European Union
2 Does Competition in the European Union Corrupt?
3 “Corruption Is Our Friend”: Exporting Graft in Infrastructure, Arms, and Oil
4 The Myth of the Market: Privatization
5 Decentralization, Democracy, and Graft
6 The Corruption of Campaign and Party Financing
7 The Pathologies of an International Organization
8 The European Union, the International Political
Economy, and Corruption

Against a familiar backdrop of multiple scandals in Spain, many of them involving property deals and local government, Dr Lapuente Giné asks why countries like Spain, France, Italy or Portugal “have for years shown levels of corruption and governance closer to those of developing nations with authoritarian governments, than advanced capitalist democracies, which have belonged to the OECD for decades”.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/charlemagne/2009/03/why_is_spain_so_corrupt

By: Marc

Marc — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 03:26:02 +0000

@1
The EU itself is the threat. This undemocratic Soviet-esque monstrosity thinks it has the right to overrule national democracies.

We must not allow the Eurosoviet to ferment much longer.

Down with the EU and its banker friends!

By: Aladar Lakatos

Aladar Lakatos — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 18:54:23 +0000

Curently Bolivia nationalizes Spanish company. Its 3rd company in 10 months. Good job.
How Spain get into it is explained in books:
1,The Blood Bankers, by Henry. Free on books.google.
2, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism, by Chang.
3,Unholy Trinity: The IMF, World Bank and WTO.
4,Confesions of an economic hitman.
5, Rulers of Evil

+Read Silvio Gesell, Gotfried Feder and Smedley Buttler will put you on path to understand system we live in

Ecuador’s Correa vows to make socialist revolution ‘irreversible’
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/20/ecuador-election-idUSL1N0BKBLW20130220

We will kick Brussels sitting muscles as well. Sooner or later

By: Betterworld

Betterworld — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 18:23:04 +0000

Failure to institute a proper system of migratory control across Europe has lead to the growth of hate-politics leading to right wing populists winning seats in many national parliaments. The Council of Ministers sits idyll by whilst the conditions for fascism ferment.