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Mark · Site Admin Joined: 13 Nov 2007 Posts: 1052

How the Chicago boys wrecked the economy: An interview with Michael Hudson

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3702.shtml

Excerpt:

As for labor unions, they haven’t been any help at all in solving the housing crisis. In Germany where I am right now, unions have sponsored co-ops, as they used to do in New York City, at low membership costs. So housing costs only absorb about 20 percent of German family budgets, compared to twice that for the United States. Imagine what could be done if pension funds had put their money into housing for their contributors, instead of into the stock market to buy and bid up prices for the stocks that CEOs and other insiders were selling.

Mark · Site Admin Joined: 13 Nov 2007 Posts: 1052

I'd guess that any union leader in the U.S. who proposed something like affordable housing would be assassinated. It would be foolish to assume that the same U.S.-based multinatiional corporations that pay death squads to eliminate union organizers in places like Colombia and Guatemala, don't do the same thing here. Of course here in the U.S. they may not have to use CIA-trained death squads, and may be able to avail themselves directly of the services of the CIA itself in support of U.S. business interests.

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