Vulnerable workers in the eurozone crisis

The general adoption of austerity policies throughout the EU and in particular in the eurozone is having very adverse effects on the level of employment, on job and employment security and on working conditions. These effects are also highly differentiated, being especially intense in the countries facing sovereign debt crises. The following paper presents some evidence for the countries in question drawn primarily from the stability programmes and national reform programmes which member states are required to submit each year to the Commission. The present paper first gives a brief description of the new policy surveillance system in the eurozone. Then it is suggested that the macroeconomic policies adopted in the context of reinforced surveillance are incoherent. The implications of austerity policies for workers are discussed; young workers are clearly badly affected. Details are given of acute pressures on European social models in the economically weaker countries, taking Portugal, Greece and Ireland as examples. It is concluded that the new policy regime in the eurozone makes social dumping in effect the central social strategy in the monetary union

Financial change and European society

The selected works deal with the nature of the financial changes taking place in Europe over recent years and with their social consequences. The approach is critical of many of the financial developments which have taken place, in terms of the dangers they pose to employment relations, to both individual economic security and social security and to economic and employment stability. At the same time, however, it has been argued that many of the most important financial changes have been functionally necessary supports for ongoing developments in the world economy. It is not denied that there are special financial interests which have limited the effective performance of these functions and distorted patterns of economic development; nevertheless it is argued that it is necessary to regard finance primarily as a function and only secondarily as a group of interests. Otherwise the increased power and influence of the financial sector itself becomes hard to understand. Three particular arguments illustrate this general position. Firstly, it is argued that critical and mainstream economists have both failed to understand the relationship between the vast volume of financial transactions today and structural changes in the financial system | misunderstandings which have led to the notion of a \casino economy." In particular, it is incorrect to treat most foreign exchange transactions as speculative. Secondly, it is argued that the very positive assessments that are often made of West European financial systems are out of date, that these systems as historically developed were not well adapted to the emergence of a global economy. Thirdly, and in consequence of the first two assertions, a relatively positive view is taken of the EU's financial integration strategy, a central component of the Lisbon agenda, which is regarded as a necessary response to the emergence of a global financial system centred on the US. On the other hand, a simplistic drive to minimise transactions costs led to the neglect of public goods of great importance to the European social models. The work so described, like most work related to the financial sector, has to be reassessed in the context of the enormous crisis in global finance which broke out in 2007. Many specific assertions will no doubt have to be revised. Nevertheless, the general view adopted seems confirmed in two basic respects: the functionality of a globally integrated financial system has not been called into question in either the academic or the policy responses to the crisis; but the social costs in terms of instability, inequality and inefficiency arising from its domination by narrow interest groups have been brutally revealed

The subordination of European finance

European political leaderships have responded to the emergence of global finance with a sustained drive to integrate Europe's own financial systems on the basis of a switch from classical bank credit to tradable securities. In itself, this was a rational response. However, financial integration was pursued at breakneck speed and in disregard of important public goods including economic stability and social justice. Reforms were undertaken in a climate of moral panic, in the false belief that the EU faced a serious problem of external competitiveness. In consequence, Europe's banks and institutional investors were badly exposed to the sub-prime crisis, the Eurozone has been radically disorganized and the EU has had little influence on the evolution of global financial structures and practices

Global finance after the credit crisis.

Although the author regards the current financial crisis as a crisis of finance itself, he sees neither financial globalisation nor the increasing importance of financial markets as being interrupted by the crisis. Instead, the direction of changes to the financial system is determined by new possibilities in the political spectrum due to the recent setback for the neoliberal project. Regarding future developments, he distinguishes two possible but contradictory scenarios. Firstly, because of falling interest rates and profits, the crisis could lead to a period of cheap money. In this case the power structures would change in favor of the working class, which could among other things be evidenced in a higher relative wage share. Secondly, the rescue of the financial sector via public money could lead to radical reforms in the financial sector. This could go hand in hand with a substantial realignment of the social and economic objectives of the financial system

Germany's brake on European capital-market development

In February 2015, the European Commission published a Green Paper in which it put forward the goal to ‘build a true single market for capital’ for all European Union member states by 2019. The present paper argues that there is no realistic prospect of achieving this goal given that the Green Paper omits any reference to a formidable impediment blocking a European capital-market union: the German government's stance on debt. The inescapable fact is that this government's reluctance to increase the supply of its bonds is depriving the European capital market of one of the essential ingredients necessary to its enlargement on the one hand and to the efficiency of its operation on the other: the former because capital-market enlargement crucially depends on attracting institutional investors who must hold a substantial proportion of their bond portfolios in the form of safe government bonds; the latter because the efficient functioning of the capital markets crucially depends on the efficiency of the money markets where safe government bonds are by far the most important form of collateral

Adhesive and degradative properties of human placental cytotrophoblast cells in vitro.

Human fetal development depends on the embryo rapidly gaining access to the maternal circulation. The trophoblast cells that form the fetal portion of the human placenta have solved this problem by transiently exhibiting certain tumor-like properties. Thus, during early pregnancy fetal cytotrophoblast cells invade the uterus and its arterial network. This process peaks during the twelfth week of pregnancy and declines rapidly thereafter, suggesting that the highly specialized, invasive behavior of the cytotrophoblast cells is closely regulated. Since little is known about the actual mechanisms involved, we developed an isolation procedure for cytotrophoblasts from placentas of different gestational ages to study their adhesive and invasive properties in vitro. Cytotrophoblasts isolated from first, second, and third trimester human placentas were plated on the basement membrane-like extracellular matrix produced by the PF HR9 teratocarcinoma cell line. Cells from all trimesters expressed the calcium-dependent cell adhesion molecule cell-CAM 120/80 (E-cadherin) which, in the placenta, is specific for cytotrophoblasts. However, only the first trimester cytotrophoblast cells degraded the matrices on which they were cultured, leaving large gaps in the basement membrane substrates and releasing low molecular mass 3H-labeled matrix components into the medium. No similar degradative activity was observed when second or third trimester cytotrophoblast cells, first trimester human placental fibroblasts, or the human choriocarcinoma cell lines BeWo and JAR were cultured on radiolabeled matrices. To begin to understand the biochemical basis of this degradative behavior, the substrate gel technique was used to analyze the cell-associated and secreted proteinase activities expressed by early, mid, and late gestation cytotrophoblasts. Several gelatin-degrading proteinases were uniquely expressed by early gestation, invasive cytotrophoblasts, and all these activities could be abolished by inhibitors of metalloproteinases. By early second trimester, the time when cytotrophoblast invasion rapidly diminishes in vivo, the proteinase pattern of the cytotrophoblasts was identical to that of term, noninvasive cells. These results are the first evidence suggesting that specialized, temporally regulated metalloproteinases are involved in trophoblast invasion of the uterus. Since the cytotrophoblasts from first trimester and later gestation placentas maintain for several days the temporally regulated degradative behavior displayed in vivo, the short-term cytotrophoblast outgrowth culture system described here should be useful in studying some of the early events in human place