Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-09-22-Speech-1-086"
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"en.20080922.19.1-086"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, this debate is taking place against a backdrop of widespread financial market crisis caused by the increasing ‘financialisation’ of the economy, unregulated speculation and the proliferation of financial instruments and products, the aim always being ever higher speculative gains. This is one more facet of the crisis of capitalism. It has been clear for some time that there was another financial bubble, and that one day it would burst, not only in the United States but in the European Union too. It is also a result of the neo-liberal policies that prompted investors to seek increasingly higher gains, that encouraged lack of transparency, and that created tax havens and allowed them to shelter and launder capital from the underground economy, from the profits of war, from people trafficking and from drugs.
Now, the public funds that were not available for social policy, for combating poverty and social exclusion, and for preventing millions of people, including children, from dying of hunger and lack of basic health care, now, I repeat, public funds are being used to avoid bankruptcies and greater losses among financial groups. The profits and gains were in the private hands of just a small group of investors and obscenely well-paid administrators, but those who will suffer the consequences are always the same: workers who lose their jobs, the rank and file who have to pay more interest, including here in the European Union, particularly in countries with weaker economies. Take Portugal for example, where low wages and pitiful old-age and retirement pensions are the rule, and where poverty and unemployment rates are amongst the highest in the EU. Since households have one of the highest debt ratios, amounting to around 120% of GDP, and micro and small and medium-sized companies depend a great deal on credit, they are now experiencing ever greater difficulties due to the resulting increased interest rates, a particularly serious problem in Portugal and other countries with weaker economies.
Some measures are therefore required in the immediate term, beginning with the abolition of tax havens and confidentiality, without which there can be no transparency. From what has been said here, however, by Commissioner McCreevy in particular, it seems that that will not be the way forward, and that is unacceptable. In this critical situation the European Central Bank’s false independence must also be abandoned in order to ensure a change in monetary and financial policy objectives, and far-reaching measures must be taken to combat stock market speculation. The priority in public policy must be to support the creation of jobs with rights, production and poverty reduction, thereby raising the purchasing power of workers and pensioners and supporting quality public services."@en1
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