Excerpted from Paul Krugman, explaining how the state and its policies have been captured by one particular group of people:

“While the ostensible reasons for inflicting pain keep changing, however, the policy prescriptions of the Pain Caucus all have one thing in common: They protect the interests of creditors, no matter the cost. Deficit spending could put the unemployed to work — but it might hurt the interests of existing bondholders. More aggressive action by the Fed could help boost us out of this slump — in fact, even Republican economists have argued that a bit of inflation might be exactly what the doctor ordered — but deflation, not inflation, serves the interests of creditors. And, of course, there’s fierce opposition to anything smacking of debt relief.

Who are these creditors I’m talking about? Not hard-working, thrifty small business owners and workers, although it serves the interests of the big players to pretend that it’s all about protecting little guys who play by the rules. The reality is that both small businesses and workers are hurt far more by the weak economy than they would be by, say, modest inflation that helps promote recovery.

No, the only real beneficiaries of Pain Caucus policies (aside from the Chinese government) are the rentiers: bankers and wealthy individuals with lots of bonds in their portfolios.”

Krugman’s argument is echoed in a editorial from Serge Halimi in Le Monde Diplomatique:

“The economic, and democratic, crisis in Europe raises questions. Why were policies that were bound to fail adopted and applied with exceptional ferocity in Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Greece? Are those responsible for pursuing these policies mad, doubling the dose every time their medicine predictably fails to work? How is it that in a democratic system, the people forced to accept cuts and austerity simply replace one failed government with another just as dedicated to the same shock treatment? Is there any alternative?

The answer to the first two questions is clear, once we forget the propaganda about the “public interest”, Europe’s “shared values” and being “all in this together”. The policies are rational and on the whole are achieving their objective. But that objective is not to end the economic and financial crisis but to reap its rich rewards. The crisis means that hundreds of thousands of civil service jobs can be cut (in Greece, nine out of ten civil servants will not be replaced on retirement), salaries and paid leave reduced, tranches of the economy sold off for the benefit of private interests, labour laws questioned, indirect taxes (the most regressive) increased, the cost of public services raised, reimbursement of health care charges reduced. The crisis is heaven-sent for neoliberals, who would have had to fight long and hard for any of these measures, and now get them all. Why should they want to see the end of a tunnel that is a fast track to paradise?

The Irish Business and Employers Confederation (IBEC)’s directors went to Brussels on 15 June to ask the European Commission to pressure Dublin to dismantle some of Ireland’s labour legislation, fast. After the meeting, Brendan McGinty, IBEC director of Industrial Relations and Human Resources, warned: “Ireland needs to show the world it is serious about economic reform and getting labour costs back into line. Foreign observers clearly see that our wage rules are a barrier to job creation, growth and recovery. Major reform is a key part of the programme agreed with the EU and the IMF. Now is not the time for government to shirk from the hard decisions.”

The decisions will not be hard for everyone, following a course that is already familiar: “Pay rates for new workers in unregulated sectors have fallen by about 25% in recent years. This shows the labour market is responding to an economic and unemployment crisis”. The lever of sovereign debt enables the European Union and International Monetary Fund to impose the Irish employers’ dream order on Dublin.

The same view seems to apply elsewhere. On 11 June, an Economist editorial observed that “Reform-minded Greeks see the crisis as an opportunity to set their country right. They quietly praise foreigners for turning the screws on their politicians”. The same issue analysed the EU and IMF austerity plan for Portugal: “Business leaders are adamant that there should be no deviation from the IMF/EU plan. Pedro Ferraz da Costa, who heads a business think-tank, says no Portuguese party in the past 30 years would have put forward so radical a reform programme. He adds that Portugal cannot afford to miss this opportunity”. Long live the crisis.

Portuguese democracy is just 30 years old. Its young leaders were showered with carnations by crowds grateful for the end of a long dictatorship and colonial wars in Africa, the promise of agrarian reform, literacy programmes and power for factory workers. Now, with reductions in the minimum wage and unemployment benefit, neoliberal reforms in pensions, health and education, and privatisation, they have had a great leap backwards. The new prime minister, Pedro Passos Coelho, has promised to go even further than the EU and the IMF require. He wants to “surprise” investors.

US economist Paul Krugman explains: “Consciously or not, policy makers are catering almost exclusively to the interests of rentiers – those who derive lots of income from assets, who lent large sums of money in the past, often unwisely, but are now being protected from loss at everyone else’s expense.” Krugman says creditor interests naturally prevail because “this is the class that makes big campaign contributions, it’s the class that has personal access to policy makers, many of whom go to work for these people when they exit government through the revolving door”. During the EU discussion on funding Greek recovery, Austrian finance minister Maria Fekter initially suggested: “You can’t leave the profits with the banks and make the taxpayers shoulder the losses”. This was short-lived. Europe hesitated for 48 hours, then the interests of rentiers prevailed, as usual.”