J.P. Morgan: The Portuguese connection

Marching against austerity

I just got back from Portugal where austerity imposed by the IMF and other international creditors is crashing peoples' standard of living and destroying public space, including public education. As usual, the alternative to public space and public decision making is privatization and Portugal is no exception.

Guess who's pushing privatization and re-engineering Portuguese society? It's J.P. Morgan, the same investment bankers and hedge-funders who helped crash the economy here.

Reuters reports:

Portugal appointed J.P. Morgan as financial advisers in the planned privatization of the national postal service...The privatiszation is part of a wider state property sell-off by Lisbon ordered under the country's 78 billion euro EU/IMF bailout.

There a strong Chicago connection in all this. It's Bill Daley, brother of the ex-mayor, who just announced he's running for governor. Daley was a V.P. for J.P. Morgan who made a cool $8.7 million the year before becoming Obama's chief-of-staff.

I'll be looking for news about the upcoming general strike called by the country's biggest unions on June 27th.