Committee Against Utility Shutoffs

It is a sure sign of the systemic breakdown of the global capitalist system that the very measures put in place to try to prevent a crisis are creating the conditions for a financial meltdown beyond even the scale of 2008.

For almost five years the world’s major central banks have pumped an estimated $7 trillion into financial markets with the stated aim of trying to spark an economic recovery. Economic data from around the world indicate that it has been a manifest failure.

The statistics on price levels are among the most significant. These show that rather than prices increasing—a sign of recovery in so-called “normal” conditions—deflationary pressures are intensifying.

In the US, consumer prices fell by 0.4 percent in May, the biggest decline since late 2008, following a 0.2 percent decline in April. In Europe, excluding food and energy costs, consumer prices in the 17-member euro zone rose by just 1 percent in April from a year earlier.

The Obama administration’s secret seizure of the phone records of Associated Press reporters is the latest attack on core democratic rights in the United States.

Last week, the Justice Department acknowledged that it had obtained a subpoena in February of this year to require telecommunications companies to turn over two months of phone records on some 20 lines used by the AP. The subpoena was part of an investigation into an alleged leak of classified information that had occurred the year before.

It is likely that many more media outlets have been similarly targeted, and the administration has refused to respond to requests that it reveal what other records were seized. Anyone who speaks to the media about any matter has to assume that their phone numbers and contact information have been or could be made available to the government by secret court order.

There could hardly be a clearer violation of the First Amendment guarantee of the freedom of the press.

With the release of his Financial and Operating Plan on Monday, Detroit’s emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, has thrown down the gauntlet to the working class. Employing the threat of bankruptcy as leverage, Orr is calling for a savage attack on a population already plagued by unemployment, declining wages and poverty.

Detroit is on the front lines of a national and international strategy of the corporate and financial elite, in which increasingly dictatorial methods are being employed to force through deeply unpopular measures.

Behind the anodyne phrases about “streamlining the city’s operations” and “restructuring the city’s long-term liabilities” lies a slash and burn policy. Health insurance for 28,500 active and retired city workers will be cut or eliminated outright. Further cuts in wages will be unilaterally imposed. Any profitable city assets or services are to be sold off.

Perhaps more than any other section of society, young people around the world have been made to bear the brunt of the capitalist crisis. In the five years since the 2008 crash, youth unemployment has reached Depression-era levels, young workers’ wages have plummeted, and education opportunities have collapsed.

As with the attack on the working class as a whole, youth all over the world have been hit, including in the advanced capitalist countries.

Throughout Europe, youth unemployment is at epidemic levels. Last Thursday, Greece’s statistics service said that the unemployment rate in February for people aged between 15 and 24 reached a staggering 64.2 percent—affecting nearly two thirds of the entire population of youth and young workers. This is up from 54.1 percent in March 2012.

The cause is not hard to discover: the brutal austerity measures and economic collapse imposed on the country by the European banks, in alliance with the Greek ruling class. Other countries that have received “bailouts” face a similar situation. In March of this year, youth unemployment hit 55.9 percent in Spain and 38.4 percent in Italy.