More Economic waffling

When I went to university it took me quite some time to get a hang of the archaeological terminology (and lots of it still baffles me), so I guess I shouldn´t expect to be a vocabulary expert when I plow through my new growing collection of literature on economic theory. I am leaving contextual seriation, morphology, isotopic analysis and paleopathology, in favour of fiscal austerity, aggregate demand and devaluation. Neither of the groups sound all that exciting now do they?

But even though I need to consult my dictionary now and then, and even though I would turn and leave as soon as someone tried to talk economics to me a few years ago, I´m finding this new topic surprisingly interesting. To the degree that I sometimes have to shout straight out or underline whole paragraphs.


I have just finished Globalization and its discontents by the former head of the World Bank and winner of the Nobel prize in economics Joseph Stiglitz (who of course gave a talk at the Hay-on Wye festival this year. Why is it that everyone went there this year when I was too ill to join in?). I´m not gonna dwell long on what the book is about, but it centres mostly on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which was created after WWII to ensure global economic stability. Although it is a public institution, meant to serve the public, it is completely non-transparent and US holds the only veto. Those who hold high posts within the IMF are a pick from the US business community, and the minute they step down they re-emerge in to, for example Citigroup or other multinational corporations. As Stiglitz says, there is no doubt that the economic decisions affecting development countries all over the world, made by economists in Washington, are designed to firstly benefit Wall Street. In many cases of IMF involvement in development countries, it employs a narrow minded "cookie-cutter" approach, focused on privatization and capital liberalization meant to attract foreign investment, while ignoring social stability, market control and regulation, with disastrous results. The IMF has confused ends with means and are blindly forcing their ideology regardless of individual circumstances, and to this day they are very reluctant to admit to any wrong doing or will to change.

I was shocked to read that an institution with almost absolute power, can get away with so much incompetence, and cause, rather than resolve many development countries spiraling crises. It is so bad that the author argues that "today´s IMF has, in my judgement, not articulated a coherent theory of market failure that would justify its own existence and provide a rationale for its particular interventions in the market" (p.197).

Read it, I had problems putting it down.

Älskade välfärd!

Until I was forced to move back home I always saw my home country as the land of opportunity. We take care of our old, sick and weak. But I warn each and every one of you, this is a curtain of the past that occasionally sweep by in the back of people´s memroy.

I was reading the paper DN today and it had a comparison between John Mc Cain and Barack Obama now when it looks like the candidates are set. Obama was for compulsory healthcare insurance, withdrawal of US troops from Irak, and no decreases of taxes for rich people, while McCain was just the opposite. Am I missing a vital part of the thought process here? Is there really anything to consider? I confess that I got solidarity in with the mothers milk ( my mum even pumped all excess out and gave it to the milk central for all mothers who were without), but are there really folks who reason in the lines of: "well since I make more money than Joe Soap (who works his ass of at a non qualified job because he or his parents couldn´t afford to pay his way through university), there is no way I think that he should get any chances to catch up, and let his children experience equal opportunities in the next generation". Guess that not all people know how to spell compassion, but the fact that the prognosis for the election indicate that its going to be a close count of the votes is extremely worrying for the development of humankind.

Maybe I´m feeling this even more because of the last few years of political development in Sweden. We´ve had a history of government led by the social democrats, but lately the conservative party has been in office, and even though they surely (and hopefully) will loose in the next elections, they have, by lowering taxes so rich people will get even more, financed the whole packet by selling out almost everything the state has owned and earned an income from. So if they are allowed to continue, only those benefiting from the tax reliefs (i.e. rich people) will be able to afford the private health care, education etc that is to come. I still sometimes wonder if what they write in the papers are meant for april fools...

So being sick in this society in times of change of policies is not the easiest. Even those who´s job it is to save on the little tax money that is left to dish out to the hungry keep making excuses and telling me that you "have to be well to be ill". The sicker I get, the more help I need, the more difficult it becomes. A year ago I was of the opinion that if you wanted anything done you have to do it yourself, now I can hardly boil an egg or hold up a book sometimes, let alone qualify for the phone queue for the only specialist in various fields I have needed in the past year, who happens to only take calls between 7.45 and 8.15 am. Naturally the government has noticed that there is a certain problem here (for the rich), so the proposed solution is not to use tax money to provide a better service, but to suggest what we call a "gräddfil", a private queue on the side for those who can pay for it. So being the poor archaeologist that I am, with not even a proper sick benefit because I worked in UK before I got ill, noone with any affluence would ever notice if I lay down and died, because I wouldn´t be fit enough doing it...

If I only could stand on my two feet, I would really want to pay a visit behind the scenes at Försäkringskassan. I´ve been trying to ring since march, and it took until may for them to inform me that the woman responsible for my case, is herself on sick leave for an indefinate period of time, and there is no substitute to deal with her shit.

Because it is shit