In this issue:

Retired Deutsche Bank Director Attacks Maastricht Pact

Privatizing U.S. Social Security Could Sink World Economy

Dutch Babies Are Now Being Euthanized

Budget Cuts Mean Reduced Care for Homeless in German Towns

Opel Workers Face 15% Cut Income; No Job Guarantee

CDU Chairwoman Re-Elected, But With Reduced Mandate

BBC Shake-Up Will Cost 3,000 Jobs

From Volume 3, Issue Number 50 of EIR Online, Published Dec. 14, 2004

Western European News Digest

Retired Deutsche Bank Director Attacks Maastricht Pact

Edgar Most, retired director and eastern Europe specialist at Deutsche Bank, called for something comparable to the former Bretton Woods monetary system in his biweekly column in Berliner Zeitung December 6. Most wrote that Eastern Germany's industry, in spite of the fact that its production costs are 30% below average levels in the West, despite labor market flexibility, cannot be mobilized because the state cannot intervene as it needs to under Maastricht criteria.

Most makes the point that Maastricht is an empty shell anyway, with several countries manipulating data and no longer respecting the Pact; therefore, the German government should insist that the problems and expenses of German reunification be taken into account by the European Union Commission.

Most adds that what is also required are "monetary agreements between the currencies that determine global trade. Such systems we had with the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944." However, he points out that in that agreement was that it exclusively oriented towards the U.S. dollar."

Privatizing U.S. Social Security Could Sink World Economy

The leading French newspaper Le Monde responded to Bush's plan to privatize Social Security with the comment: 'It's morality, stupid,' pointing out that the effort could sink the whole economy.

Economist Daniel Cohen, writing in the Dec. 4-5 weekend issue of Le Monde, gives a political profile of the post-Bush II voters in the U.S.

The article asks how it is possible that, with 1% of the wealthy population receiving as much as 40% of the income, those in the lower income brackets can't manage to get their act together and get political control of the U.S. The reason given by the Democrats since the end of the campaign, is that the Republicans pulled an "it's morality, stupid," against the "it's the economy, stupid" of the Democrats.

In the recent period, Cohen says, the opposition between a big-spending left wing and a money-tight right wing has totally turned around, with the Democrats imposing the policies of rigor and austerity, and the Republicans building up the deficits. From this standpoint, Cohen takes on Bush for his plan to privatize Social Security. "After being elected, George Bush declared that he was planning to "spend" his electoral capital. Unfortunately it's a remark that must be taken literally. If Bush implements his programs, namely a partial privatization of Social Security, a budgetary apocalypse is a possibility.

Without going as far as Paul Krugman, who does not hesitate to compare the United States to Argentina, Bush's project could well push the dollar, which stands at this point on the verge of the abyss, to take a great step forward. A new start for inflation, leading to interest rate hikes, a collapse of the real estate market, and other calamities, cannot be excluded. The Republicans will understand soon that moral and social questions can be more linked together than electoral strategists believe they are.

Dutch Babies Are Now Being Euthanized

Babies are being put to death in Dutch hospitals—"euthanized"—according to an AP wire from Amsterdam. So the Netherlands, which in the 1980s and '90s pioneered Nazi-style euthanasia against the elderly, the chronically ill, the mentally ill, the retarded, and finally, those who were simply depressed—has now taken another step into utter bestiality.

The Groningen Academic Hospital recently proposed guidelines for "mercy killings" of babies said to be terminally ill—and then revealed that it had already begun carrying out such murders, using lethal doses of sedatives.

The hospital's declaration came in the middle of growing discussion in Holland over whether to legalize euthanasia on people who cannot decide for themselves; the Dutch doctors' association last summer urged the Health Ministry to create an independent board to review euthanasia cases for those with "no free will."

As a matter of practice, of course, Dutch hospitals have been killing such people for years, to the point that a few years ago, an Englishman on holiday who fell ill in the Netherlands was euthanized before his family was even notified that he was in the hospital; to the point that numerous reports have reached us concerning the state of terror in which the Dutch elderly live, dreading to visit doctors or hospitals.

Budget Cuts Mean Reduced Care for Homeless in German Towns

High indebtedness, shrinking tax revenues, and the dictate of budget-balancing are forcing most German municipalities to cut deeply into budgets for homeless care. Cuts in the range of 20-30 percent and even more, of what municipalities have provided so far, in terms of emergency housing (especially needed during winter periods), medical care, food supply and the like, become a pattern. Additional problems are caused by the state governments increasingly cutting subsidies to municipalities.

Welfare organizations are warning of a new migration pattern, with several tens of thousands of homeless citizens moving from cities with little or no support for them, to cities in a comparably "better" financial situation—or which are said to be in such a situation (but which are not much better off). What still remains as emergency budgets in such cities, will soon also be strained.

Opel Workers Face 15% Cut Income; No Job Guarantee

The Detroit headquarters of General Motors has reiterated its plan to go for deep cuts in Europe, and it says now that even more than the annual cuts of 500 million euros in corporate expenses, which it announced in early October, will have to be made.

The only alleged "concession" the management is going to make, is that this does not necessarily imply the axing of 12,000 jobs in Europe, with 10,000 of these in Germany; an agreement with the workers and the labor union on average income cuts of 15 percent, may do most of the dirty job for the time being.

A firm guarantee for the jobs cannot be given, though, and several new projects for outsourcing the manufacturing of car parts, which the management is considering, will undermine production and jobs at the German sites of Bochum, Ruesselsheim, Eisenach, and Kaiserslautern.

CDU Chairwoman Re-Elected, But With Reduced Mandate

Angela Merkel was re-elected as party chairwoman of the Christian Democratic Union, by the delegates of the national party convention in Duesseldorf, Dec. 6. She was approved by 88.4 percent of the delegates, whereas in 2002, she won 93.7 percent.

There is more behind this figure than meets the eye: especially among long time, active party members who still endorse the social market economy model, Merkel's neo-con and neo-liberal policies are opposed, though she has stronger support among younger party members of the lifestyle generation kind who are not very active. Crucial sections of the party are drifting away from Merkel's leadership circle.

BBC Shake-Up Will Cost 3,000 Jobs

The big post-Hutton Report "shake up" at the BBC will cost 3,000 jobs over three years. BBC director general Mark Thompson, who took over after Greg Dyke resigned under huge pressure due to the Iraq War-David Kelly-Hutton report upheaval, is announcing an "overhaul" of the BBC which will cut jobs, and move another 2,000 employees out of London. The job cuts, including in the news department, will begin in March 2005.

Human resources, training, finances and legal services are all to be hit by the jobs cut. These divisions will lose about 2,500 jobs from a total workforce of 6,500. Overall, the BBC employs about 27,000 people.

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