Dictatorship of the Market

There are situations which, when described, cannot be spared by beating around the bush or mincing words. Why try to sweeten the word “dictatorship” with another when it is based exactly on a determined fact?

And the fact is that the decisions of those so-called ratings agencies represent interventions into the lives of people: taking away rights, lowering salaries, forcing layoffs. Who gave power to these rating agencies? Citizens? Were they elected? Did they present any plans? Who are they? Do they have faces?

Are they accountable to anyone? Do they even pay taxes?

All of the answers that each one of us could give to these questions will be enough to realize that we are facing an opaque phenomenon which, with absolute certainty, has nothing to do with any democratic mechanism. Perhaps it seems excessive to say that decisions of these rating agencies interfere directly in people’s lives. But this is exactly what happens. The agencies rate the debts of countries, which determines the treatment that the market will give these debts, and which then requires that governments to alter their countries’ economies. As many know, during the current crisis, these changes fall directly on the most vulnerable sectors of the population.

Most people don’t know there are many rating agencies. This is understandable as we only speak of three: Standard and Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch, all of them American, and whose importance appears to be a etched in stone.

Last Friday Standard and Poor’s downgraded the ratings of nine countries of the European Union, even removing the highest (AAA) assessment of France and Austria. Europe was in a state of shock two weeks before a summit about a treaty which will place drastic limits on public deficits, institutionalize austerity and wound the same as always. Such a treaty will represent the end of the ability of the states to realize investments and to maintain the social rights of citizens.

Then, in the middle of the general panic, rose the voice of Merkel, spared by the assessors, saying that the best answer to give Standard and Poor’s would be to approve and rapidly and vigorously put into effect a new treaty. This is saying in plain language, “Let’s not waste time with doubts and discussions, let’s go forward with the treaty,” which as we already can see is a creation of Merkel. There is no thought of submitting the treaty to a referendum of the populace, as if by doing so time would be lost and and it would become unviable.

However, faced with rising criticism, Standard and Poor’s assures people that it is not acting capriciously. They are in the right; the power of money hates whim and only knows greed. We would do well to notice that between the downgrading of debt ratings and the sonorous proclamation of Merkel, there is a relationship of cause and effect, which is not of course either whimsical or coincidental, given that the German chancellor is the greatest proponent of neoliberal orthodoxy in the European Union universe.

The ratings agencies — the American “three sisters,” understand — are pillars of a neoliberal order which imposes absolute power over the markets: markets of speculation, usury, and of the economy of the casino. They are not elected or chosen by us, but given to us. I have no doubt that the word “dictatorship” is the best one to describe the situation as it is.