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	People around the world were impacted by the 2008 financial crisis by Radhika Balakrishnan, Gail Cartmail, Rob Reich Righting Finance, The Nation, Robin Hood Tax Campaign   In an inter-connected world, a human rights-centered macroeconomic and financial policy is needed, by Radhika Balakrishnan.   People around the world were impacted by the 2008 financial crisis which stemmed from the US´s financial policies. The key human rights lesson from the crisis is that the economic and social rights of people and nations everywhere are interconnected.   In our inter-connected world, the US must make economic decisions that respect the human rights of all individuals who will be impacted by national, economic, financial and fiscal policy.   At one level, economic policy in the United States should be guided by the principle of progressive realization and non-retrogression. Progressive realization recognizes that the resources at the disposition of a government are limited; nevertheless, a government must take specific steps to ensure that the enjoyment of economic and social rights improves over time.   Non-retrogression means that once a particular level of enjoyment of rights has been realized, it should be maintained.   At another level, the right to non-discrimination and equality intersects all other human rights and is an essential component of the governments´ obligation to protect.   The economic downturn destroyed jobs reduced standards of living, heightened risks for ordinary people and drove families deeper into poverty, especially women and other minorities.   At every turn since, the right to non-discrimination and equality has been threatened.   Examples where the principles of progressive realization, non-retrogression and non-discrimination and equality were violated in the design, implementation, or outcomes of macroeconomic and financial policy decisions include:   The right to an adequate standard of living   As a result of the crisis women continue to experience higher rates of poverty and the gender poverty gap increased.   For example, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children was reduced by USD 333 million despite the serious issue of food insecurity in the USA.   In 2012, 14.5 per cent of US households were insecure at some point during the year and of the majority of families affected were minorities. Within those households, single-mother households experienced a disproportionate higher rate of food insecurity (34.5 per cent of these households) than households headed by single men (23.6 per cent).   The right to work   Unemployment rates rose dramatically at the beginning of the crisis but have failed to return to pre-2008 levels. Underemployment rates continue to be four points higher than the average rate in 2007.   In addition the types of jobs created since 2010 have been on the whole lower paying or part-time positions, 1.85 million more people are employed in low-paying jobs than in 2008. African-American and Latino men and women faced higher rates of unemployment during the recession.   The right to non-discrimination/equality   Across professional fields, female workers make less than their male counterparts. In 2014, women continue to make only 77 cents for every dollar that their equally qualified male counterparts make.   There is clearly a need for the US to recognize and take responsibility for the failure to meet human rights obligations for the use of maximum available resources and progressive realization of economic and social rights that cross national boundaries. These obligations will include the conduct of macro policy in such areas as government spending, tax policy, public debt, and the role of development assistance and monetary policy. If human rights are to be observed this framework must be applicable to all global financial actors, including private sector actors.   * Radhika Balakrishnan is Faculty Director and former Executive Director of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership, Rutgers University.   http://www.rightingfinance.org/?p=1296   Taxing bankers can rebuild our public services, by Gail Cartmail. (Robin Hood Tax Campaign/UK)   As the United Nations marks International Public Services Day, our own government is sharpening the axe for a renewed austerity offensive. Billions of pounds worth of vital services are to be slashed, accompanied by another fire sale as public assets from the Royal Mint to the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) are handed over to City investors at knockdown rates.   Over the weekend I joined thousands of members of my union, Unite, as we marched as part of a growing movement demanding an alternative to austerity. The Robin Hood Tax is central to that alternative. Not only does it expose the lie that cuts are inevitable, it readdresses the injustice at the heart of austerity. It makes those who caused the financial crisis of 2008 pay for the consequences.   It is estimated that this tiny tax on financial transactions like stocks, bonds and derivatives could raise up to £20 billion bounds annually. This far surpasses the bank levy (that generates £4 billion a year) in the teeth of fierce opposition from the boardrooms of the banks.   Yet when Chancellor George Osborne addressed the City elite at Mansion House earlier this month he preferred the role of the Sheriff of Nottingham to Robin Hood. Osborne announced £23 billion worth of sell-offs with Royal Mail, the Mint and the Met Office all lined up at bargain prices for City investors. Of all of these, selling the public stake in the two bailed out banks, Lloyds and RBS, is perhaps the most galling.   RBS received over £45 billion from the taxpayer in 2008, just part of the banking bailout which cost each UK household £46,000. In return the Treasury received an 80% share in the bank. Now the New Economics Foundation estimate that the public are set to lose over £13 billon on our investment as Osborne sells our stake at a massive loss.   Such astronomical figures serve to remind us of the debt senior figures in the biggest banks, hedge funds and city firms owe to us. Yet the Robin Hood Tax is not an exercise in ''banker bashing''. It targets the parts of the finance sector most responsible for the crash and to succeed it must be linked to the need to change the banks from within.   Our savings, pensions, student loans and mortgages all give us a stake in the banks. We would all benefit from a socially responsible finance sector that pays its way. However, the sharp truth is that neither the Robin Hood Tax nor the reforms our banks need will be gifted to us from the top. Change can only be fought for from below and supporters of the Robin Hood Tax will find a willing ally in bank workers.   Unite represents many thousands of bank workers across high street branches, call centres and support offices. With an organised presence across Britain''s major banks and insurance companies, Unite is the largest finance sector trade union in Europe.   Since 2008 many senior and investment bankers have acted as if the crash never happened. It''s rare for a week to go by without one of the major banks being splashed across the front pages. Yet while regulators have issued huge fines and the bank levy is supposed to make the industry pay back its debt to the taxpayer, these costs have continually been handed down to the workforce who are being forced to pay for the misconduct of the boardrooms.   The latest example is HSBC. Britain''s largest bank has announced a further 8,000 job cuts across the UK just as the bank faces being dragged into the corruption scandal engulfing FIFA. This new wave of job cuts follow the 53 branch closures made by HSBC in 2014.   Indeed HSBC accounted for 20% of all branch closures over the past ten years and there is little sign of this assault on local communities stopping.   http://www.robinhoodtax.org.uk/   How Goldman Sachs Profited From the Greek Debt Crisis, by Robert B. Reich. (The Nation)   The Greek debt crisis offers another illustration of Wall Street’s powers of persuasion and predation, although the Street is missing from most accounts.   The crisis was exacerbated years ago by a deal with Goldman Sachs, engineered by Goldman’s current CEO, Lloyd Blankfein. Blankfein and his Goldman team helped Greece hide the true extent of its debt, and in the process almost doubled it. And just as with the American subprime crisis, and the current plight of many American cities, Wall Street’s predatory lending played an important although little-recognized role.   In 2001, Greece was looking for ways to disguise its mounting financial troubles. The Maastricht Treaty required all eurozone member states to show improvement in their public finances, but Greece was heading in the wrong direction. Then Goldman Sachs came to the rescue, arranging a secret loan of 2.8 billion euros for Greece, disguised as an off-the-books “cross-currency swap”—a complicated transaction in which Greece’s foreign-currency debt was converted into a domestic-currency obligation using a fictitious market exchange rate.   As a result, about 2 percent of Greece’s debt magically disappeared from its national accounts. Christoforos Sardelis, then head of Greece’s Public Debt Management Agency, later described the deal to Bloomberg Business as “a very sexy story between two sinners.” For its services, Goldman received a whopping 600 million euros ($793 million), according to Spyros Papanicolaou, who took over from Sardelis in 2005. That came to about 12 percent of Goldman’s revenue from its giant trading and principal-investments unit in 2001—which posted record sales that year. The unit was run by Blankfein.   Then the deal turned sour. After the 9/11 attacks, bond yields plunged, resulting in a big loss for Greece because of the formula Goldman had used to compute the country’s debt repayments under the swap. By 2005, Greece owed almost double what it had put into the deal, pushing its off-the-books debt from 2.8 billion euros to 5.1 billion. In 2005, the deal was restructured and that 5.1 billion euros in debt locked in. Perhaps not incidentally, Mario Draghi, now head of the European Central Bank and a major player in the current Greek drama, was then managing director of Goldman’s international division.   Greece wasn’t the only sinner. Until 2008, European Union accounting rules allowed member nations to manage their debt with so-called off-market rates in swaps, pushed by Goldman and other Wall Street banks. In the late 1990s, JPMorgan enabled Italy to hide its debt by swapping currency at a favorable exchange rate, thereby committing Italy to future payments that didn’t appear on its national accounts as future liabilities.   But Greece was in the worst shape, and Goldman was the biggest enabler. Undoubtedly, Greece suffers from years of corruption and tax avoidance by its wealthy. But Goldman wasn’t an innocent bystander: It padded its profits by leveraging Greece to the hilt—along with much of the rest of the global economy. Other Wall Street banks did the same. When the bubble burst, all that leveraging pulled the world economy to its knees.   Even with the global economy reeling from Wall Street’s excesses, Goldman offered Greece another gimmick. In early November 2009, three months before the country’s debt crisis became global news, a Goldman team proposed a financial instrument that would push the debt from Greece’s healthcare system far into the future. This time, though, Greece didn’t bite.   As we know, Wall Street got bailed out by American taxpayers. And in subsequent years, the banks became profitable again and repaid their bailout loans. Bank shares have gone through the roof. Goldman’s were trading at $53 a share in November 2008; they’re now worth over $200. Executives at Goldman and other Wall Street banks have enjoyed huge pay packages and promotions. Blankfein, now Goldman’s CEO, raked in $24 million last year alone.   Meanwhile, the people of Greece struggle to buy medicine and food.   There are analogies here in America, beginning with the predatory loans made by Goldman, other big banks, and the financial companies they were allied with in the years leading up to the bust. Today, even as the bankers vacation in the Hamptons, millions of Americans continue to struggle with the aftershock of the financial crisis in terms of lost jobs, savings, and homes.   Meanwhile, cities and states across America have been forced to cut essential services because they’re trapped in similar deals sold to them by Wall Street banks. Many of these deals have involved swaps analogous to the ones Goldman sold the Greek government. And much like the assurances it made to the Greek government, Goldman and other banks assured the municipalities that the swaps would let them borrow more cheaply than if they relied on traditional fixed-rate bonds—while downplaying the risks they faced. Then, as interest rates plunged and the swaps turned out to cost far more, Goldman and the other banks refused to let the municipalities refinance without paying hefty fees to terminate the deals.   Three years ago, the Detroit Water Department had to pay Goldman and other banks penalties totaling $547 million to terminate costly interest-rate swaps. Forty percent of Detroit’s water bills still go to paying off the penalty. Residents of Detroit whose water has been shut off because they can’t pay have no idea that Goldman and other big banks are responsible. Likewise, the Chicago school system—whose budget is already cut to the bone—must pay over $200 million in termination penalties on a Wall Street deal that had Chicago schools paying $36 million a year in interest-rate swaps.   Goldman Sachs and the other giant Wall Street banks are masterful at selling complex deals by exaggerating their benefits and minimizing their costs and risks. That’s how they earn giant fees. When a client gets into trouble—whether that client is an American homeowner, a US city, or Greece—Goldman ducks and hides behind legal formalities and shareholder interests. Visit the related web page
	Ending the hidden scourge of violence against women at work by Rachel Noble Equal Times   You may well have come across the shocking statistic that more than one in three women globally will experience some form of violence in their lifetime, the vast majority of which (30 per cent) will be at the hands of an intimate partner.   The dire consequences of such violence – a daily occurrence for many women - can extend far beyond their physical, sexual and and mental health, to impact upon many other areas of their lives. This includes women’s working lives.   Research in Vietnam and Tanzania shows that women experiencing domestic violence have higher levels of work absenteeism and lower productivity and earnings. This can potentially lock women in to situations of economic dependency on abusive partners, perpetuating a cycle of violence and control.   However, what the ‘one in three’ statistic doesn’t capture are the vast numbers of women subjected to gender-based violence in their places of work.   The International Trade Union Confederation estimates that up to half of women experience sexual harassment at work, a figure borne out by Mexico’s National Institute for Women, which put the figure there at 46 per cent.   This amounts to millions of women in offices and supply chains throughout the world producing clothes, electronics, and fruit and vegetables, or providing services in sectors such as tourism or domestic work, experiencing bullying, harassment, verbal abuse, physical and sexual assault and body searches, as well as violations of their sexual and reproductive rights, such as forced pregnancy tests.   Toxic and hazardous working conditions that leave women exposed to health risks or even death – such as the 1,100 women who lost their lives in the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh – can also be seen as a form of violence stemming from systemic government and corporate negligence.   But women enduring harassment and violence at the hands of colleagues, supervisors and managers rarely get justice.   The same study in Mexico found that a quarter of women reporting sexual harassment were dismissed, while a staggering 40 per cent were forced to leave their jobs. With livelihoods at risk, along with the shame and blame that is so often place on women who speak out, it is likely reporting levels are extremely low.   As called for in a new report by ActionAid, Fearless, it is high time that the world stood firm with the countless brave women around the world working tirelessly to tackle violence against women, including the largely overlooked issue of violence at work.   One critical way governments can do this is by backing the anticipated target on eradicating all forms of violence against women and girls in the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), due to launch in September.   Another is to get behind the calls, spearheaded by trade unions, for a new ILO Convention on gender-based violence at work. Vitally, both initiatives will need to entail more than mere words, but also political will, adequate financing, and the championing of women’s organisations so that they can hold those in power to account and ensure this abhorrent human rights violation finally becomes a thing of the past. Visit the related web page
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