Seven changes needed to save the euro and the EU

Joseph Stiglitz in The Guardian

To say that the eurozone has not been performing well since the 2008 crisis is an understatement. Its member countries have done more poorly than the European Union countries outside the eurozone, and much more poorly than the United States, which was the epicentre of the crisis.

The worst-performing eurozone countries are mired in depression or deep recession; their condition – think of Greece – is worse in many ways than what economies suffered during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The best-performing eurozone members, such as Germany, look good, but only in comparison; and their growth model is partly based on beggar-thy-neighbour policies, whereby success comes at the expense of erstwhile “partners”.

Four types of explanation have been advanced to explain this state of affairs.Germany likes to blame the victim, pointing to Greece’s profligacy and the debt and deficits elsewhere. But this puts the cart before the horse: Spain and Ireland had surpluses and low debt-to-GDP ratios before the euro crisis. So the crisis caused the deficits and debts, not the other way around.

Deficit fetishism is, no doubt, part of Europe’s problems. Finland, too, has been having trouble adjusting to the multiple shocks it has confronted, with GDP in 2015 around 5.5% below its 2008 peak.

Other “blame the victim” critics cite the welfare state and excessive labour-market protections as the cause of the eurozone’s malaise. Yet some of Europe’s best-performing countries, such as Sweden and Norway, have the strongest welfare states and labour-market protections.

Many of the countries now performing poorly were doing very well – above the European average – before the euro was introduced. Their decline did not result from some sudden change in their labour laws, or from an epidemic of laziness in the crisis countries. What changed was the currency arrangement.

The second type of explanation amounts to a wish that Europe had better leaders, men and women who understood economics better and implemented better policies. Flawed policies – not just austerity, but also misguided so-called structural reforms, which widened inequality and thus further weakened overall demand and potential growth – have undoubtedly made matters worse.

But the eurozone was a political arrangement, in which it was inevitable that Germany’s voice would be loud. Anyone who has dealt with German policymakers over the past third of a century should have known in advance the likely result. Most important, given the available tools, not even the most brilliant economic tsar could not have made the eurozone prosper.

The third set of reasons for the eurozone’s poor performance is a broader rightwing critique of the EU, centred on the eurocrats’ penchant for stifling, innovation-inhibiting regulations. This critique, too, misses the mark. The eurocrats, like labour laws or the welfare state, didn’t suddenly change in 1999, with the creation of the fixed exchange-rate system, or in 2008, with the beginning of the crisis. More fundamentally, what matters is the standard of living, the quality of life. Anyone who denies how much better off we in the west are with our stiflingly clean air and water should visit Beijing.

That leaves the fourth explanation: the euro is more to blame than the policies and structures of individual countries. The euro was flawed at birth. Even the best policymakers the world has ever seen could not have made it work. The eurozone’s structure imposed the kind of rigidity associated with the gold standard. The single currency took away its members’ most important mechanism for adjustment – the exchange rate – and the eurozone circumscribed monetary and fiscal policy.

In response to asymmetric shocks and divergences in productivity, there would have to be adjustments in the real (inflation-adjusted) exchange rate, meaning that prices in the eurozone periphery would have to fall relative to Germany and northern Europe. But, with Germany adamant about inflation – its prices have been stagnant – the adjustment could be accomplished only through wrenching deflation elsewhere. Typically, this meant painful unemployment and weakening unions; the eurozone’s poorest countries, and especially the workers within them, bore the brunt of the adjustment burden. So the plan to spur convergence among eurozone countries failed miserably, with disparities between and within countries growing.

This system cannot and will not work in the long run: democratic politics ensures its failure. Only by changing the eurozone’s rules and institutions can the euro be made to work. This will require seven changes:

• abandoning the convergence criteria, which require deficits to be less than 3% of GDP

• replacing austerity with a growth strategy, supported by a solidarity fund for stabilisation

• dismantling a crisis-prone system whereby countries must borrow in a currency not under their control, and relying instead on Eurobonds or some similar mechanism

• better burden-sharing during adjustment, with countries running current-account surpluses committing to raise wages and increase fiscal spending, thereby ensuring that their prices increase faster than those in the countries with current-account deficits;

• changing the mandate of the European Central Bank, which focuses only on inflation, unlike the US Federal Reserve, which takes into account employment, growth, and stability as well

• establishing common deposit insurance, which would prevent money from fleeing poorly performing countries, and other elements of a “banking union”

• and encouraging, rather than forbidding, industrial policies designed to ensure that the eurozone’s laggards can catch up with its leaders.
From an economic perspective, these changes are small; but today’s eurozone leadership may lack the political will to carry them out. That doesn’t change the basic fact that the current halfway house is untenable. A system intended to promote prosperity and further integration has been having just the opposite effect. An amicable divorce would be better than the current stalemate.

Of course, every divorce is costly; but muddling through would be even more costly. As we’ve already seen this summer in the United Kingdom, if European leaders can’t or won’t make the hard decisions, European voters will make the decisions for them – and the leaders may not be happy with the results.

Why are we afraid of male sexuality?

We may have gone a long way towards liberating women, but male desire is increasingly seen as a problem

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• • Ally Fogg
  • guardian.co.uk, Monday 18 July 2011 12.30 BST
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While older women are now widely eroticised, male equivalents such as John Major are attacked as 'old lechers'. Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian
Is there anything good to be said about male sexuality? That might seem a daft question. Apparently it brings a lot of pleasure and excitement to the lives of men and women alike, it's inspired some of the greatest art, music and literature through the ages and has played a fairly substantial role in sustaining our species and populating the planet. Nonetheless you'll need to search very, very hard to find any positive appraisal of male heterosexuality. Since the era of the permissive society and the mainstreaming of modern feminism, western society has gone a long way towards liberating women's sexuality. Younger women have, to an unprecedented extent, been encouraged to believe they can be as sexual as they like and to experience and express their desires as they wish. Even the age-old proscriptions on female promiscuity have been largely broken down, exemplified by the glorious flowering of the SlutWalk movement. Simultaneously, and perhaps not coincidentally, male sexuality has been increasingly seen as a problem. You can hear it in the gentle, dismissive mockery that says men are simple creatures who "only want one thing" or, at the extreme, outright vilification. The male gaze threatens, male desire is aggressive. Our primal instincts are pathologised with the jargon of gender studies. Righteous and necessary efforts to reduce sexual crimes have had the unwelcome effect of teaching generations of men that our sexuality can be dangerous and frightening. Don't believe me? Look back at the Bailey review into the early sexualisation of children, and the surrounding media hoo-ha. Leaving aside any concerns about the veracity and accuracy of the report itself (and I have plenty myself) it is striking that acres of print were devoted to the impacts of these social trends on girls, their self-esteem and body image; their developing sexuality; their safety and security. Barely a word was spoken about boys, beyond fears that they are being turned into beasts. Again and again the message came out: girls have problems. Boys are problems. And yet does anyone doubt that there should be concerns about how easy access to porn impacts upon boys' sexual development, their self-esteem, their body image or performance anxieties? It's not as if young men bask in perfect mental health and happiness – young men commit suicide at nearly four times the rate of young women, and sex and relationships rank high on their list of concerns. At the other end of the age range, sexually active older women are now widely eroticised (albeit often with a rather misogynistic undertone) as "cougars" or (forgive me) "Milfs" while their male equivalents are disparaged as dirty old men. Observer columnist Viv Groskop recently went further, opining about any older man who has sex outside marriage, even the mild-mannered old janitor John Major, saying "Unfortunately it's not against the law to be an old lecher. Maybe it should be. Or at the very least you shouldn't be rewarded with the highest office in the land." Perhaps the greatest concern for men and women alike should be the way male sexuality and sexual expressiveness balances on a narrow tightrope of acceptability. One step off the wire and you tumble into the realm of perversion. As feminist blogger Clarisse Thorn noted last year, any man who hits on a woman and gets it wrong risks being branded a "creep" – sometimes deservedly so, of course, but often for no greater sin than being insufficiently attractive or socially skilled, or having misread a perceived signal of invitation. I've never heard of a woman being stigmatised or disparaged for expressing an attraction to big men, rough men, geeky men or whatever. A man who expresses similar desires for women who don't conform to standard norms of beauty is a perv, a fetishist, a weirdo. All of these prejudices are rehearsed and reiterated by men and women alike, they reside in the intangible web of social norms, conventions and culture, but they can and must be challenged and changed. If we can begin to openly and joyously celebrate the positives to male sexuality, it might become easier for men to be happy and confident sexual partners, and in turn become better lovers, and sometimes better people. Male sexuality is no less diverse, complex and wonderful than women's or, for that matter, no more base, coarse and animalistic. Sure, most men might be slightly more likely to let our gaze linger on eye-catching curves, and slightly less likely to giggle about our lovers' proclivities with our friends, but in the grand picture women and men are surprisingly similar, in this respect as in so many others. Women have been entirely justified in asking that we blokes respect their rights, autonomy and wishes, that we respect them as sexual beings. It shouldn't be too much to ask for a little of the same in return.

• guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011

Sowetan

 

Published by TiCam- 04-10-07

In South Africa, women now rape men

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It is strange but true. In South Africa, women are now raping men. If you are tall, handsome and huge, you may likely be a target. Moreover, if you love walking alone in the open field or at night, you may be taking a big risk and chances are that you may fall a prey to the gang of women rapists.

Nevertheless, if a man is not in the right mood for sex, the rapists have a way of creating one. They caress, suck and rub the victim's penis with a lotion. And before you say rape, the penis is erect and ready for action.

Penultimate Tuesday, the South African police arrested a 30-year old woman for allegedly luring a young man into an open field and then raped him while her two other friends stood guard, waiting for their turn. The police confirmed that after the incident, the victim's bruised penis was treated at a local hospital.

In another incident widely reported in the local media, two women allegedly lured a 21-year old job seeker away from a brick company by pretending they were equally looking for work. While walking across an open field, they pounced on the young man and raped him. According to report, police arrested a woman while the other escaped.

The victim told the police thus: "They threatened me, forced me to take off my pants, and then rubbed lotion on my penis to get an erection. The other woman kept watch while the arrested woman had sex with me."

Modus operandi

According to Sowetan, a South African newspaper, the rapists operate in a group of two or three. They ride in posh cars and look out for a man walking alone. Once they spot a potential prey, they pull up beside him and offer to give him a ride. If he accepts their offer, the women would take him to their house and at gunpoint, take their turn to rape him.

Only recently, the police confirmed the incident of a 24-year old man, who after being abducted at gunpoint by three women traveling in a white BMW, was forced to kneel face down on the back seat of the car. He was prevented from looking up and was only allowed to look about him when he was inside the house. For three days, the young man was kept in the house and gang raped.

According to Inspector Manyadza Ralidzhivha, the victim, who was dumped in the township after the incident reported that, "the women who were older than him, made him drink some liquids and then took turns having sex with him. They did not talk too much, but had sex with him as he lay face-up on the bed in a house."

Major problem

For Thembi Hlatshuiayo and Phindile Morewwa, both students of a popular secondary school in Johannesburg, apart from being a major problem in South Africa, women raping men has become a source of embarrassment to the womenfolk.

"The issue of women raping men is now one of the major problems in South Africa. In fact, it is a source of embarrassment to us," Thembi said.

Giving AIDS back to men

Saturday Sun investigation, however, revealed that the alleged rapists are mostly AIDS infected women, who believed that they have contacted the killer disease from men and have decided to pay them back in their own coins.

Lebo Leburu, a shop assistant in Johannesburg, told Saturday Sun thus: "The rapists are AIDS infected prostitutes. They are angry that men have given them the disease and have decided to give it back to them."

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