El PP aumenta su ventaja y Podemos supera al PSOE [CIS]

El CIS apunta a que si ahora hubiera elecciones generales los socialistas obtendrían un 17% de los votos, mientras que el partido de Pablo Iglesias lograría un 21,8%. Este resultado supondría para el PSOE un caída de 5,6 puntos, respecto a las elecciones del pasado 26 de junio y una subida de Podemos de 0,7 décimas.

La encuesta del CIS está hecha antes de que los socialistas decidieran abstenerse para permitir un Gobierno de Mariano Rajoy pero después de defenestrar a Sánchez y dejar la dirección en manos de una gestora.

El sondeo refleja una leve subida del PP, un punto y medio más que el 26-J, y una ligera caída de Ciudadanos. Los populares consiguieron un 33% de apoyo en las últimas elecciones y ahora ascenderían al 34,5% mientras que Ciudadanos baja del 13,05% al 12,08%. Esta encuesta ya recoge el pacto de investidura suscrito entre el PP y Albert Rivera.

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Encuesta del CIS

Dos de cada tres votantes del PSOE creen que abstenerse ante Rajoy fue un error https://t.co/qgdo1HOTSi vía @elespanolcom pic.twitter.com/A0jPIuINJr

— The Catalan Analyst (@CatalanAnalyst) 7 de noviembre de 2016

Ahora aplauden -aunque bastantes menos- a la CUP

Guy Verhofstadt, coordinador de la negociación con los británicos: 'El Brexit es una oportunidad para reformar la UE'

BUSINESS INSIDER.- Business Insider's Adam Payne: Can you briefly explain what your role will be in Brexit talks?

Guy Verhofstadt: The withdrawal agreement and new agreement regarding the EU's new relationship with Britain needs to be approved by the European Parliament.

The Parliament has nominated me to coordinate negotiations, to have a point of view in these negotiations. We [the parliament] want to be involved from day one once the negotiations start because at the end we need to give approval for both things: the withdrawal agreement and a new relationship [between the EU and Britain].

Payne: How difficult will it be for the EU and Britain to come to an agreement?

Verhofstadt: It's difficult to say until Article 50 is triggered by the British authorities and we can start negotiations.

What is key for the European Union is not undo the internal market and the so-called four freedoms. We are also going to try to strengthen the Union, to use this exercise to strengthen the Union in a number of ways. The main approach of the European Parliament will be looking to protect the interests of citizens of the EU. It's their interests that we need to defend as their representatives.

Payne: So there is no chance of Britain curbing EU immigration while retaining access to the European Single Market? That's the sort of deal some ministers have hinted at...

Verhofstadt: The basic position of all the institutions in Europe is very clear: the four freedoms are bound to each other. The internal market is based on four freedoms — not three, or two. Goods, services, capital, and the free movement of people. You cannot separate them. I think this is a perfectly firm and clear position for everybody.

It's easy to say 'yeah, we want a special passport for people working in our services to go and work in Europe,' for example, but the opposite, like the possibility of Polish people to work on a construction site in London, is not possible. This just doesn't make any sense.

Payne: Surely, this means Britain is heading for a hard Brexit?

Verhofstadt: We have to wait and see what the position of the British government is at the moment of Article 50 being triggered. How it will develop itself is down to the what the Supreme Court says about it. It is clear that the European Parliament has the final say but the British Parliament will have a role to play, too. Let's wait for that.

When we get to that point, they will ask for something, we will say yes or no. First, Britain needs to define its position.

Payne: Some people have suggested that the EU intends to give Britain a "bad" deal in order to deter other member states from leaving in the future — is this true?

Verhofstadt: It is not a question of a bad deal. If a country wants to go out, they go out. It's their decision. But it's important that we look to the interests of the 48% people who didn't vote out. How are we going to do this? I don't know.

The main thing, in my opinion, is that Brexit is an opportunity to reform the Union in a way that which will make it more effective and stop countries wanting to break away. It is an opportunity to end a system which has been in place for over 20 years now, whereby there are 28 unions, not one. An old system where each member picks and chooses which policy they like.

There is a belief that we are going to give a bad deal to a country so other countries don't follow the same direction. The challenge we actually face is completely different. This negotiation is about reforming the EU in a way that makes it an actual union, something that hasn't been the case for quite a long time now.

What I do in Europe's Last Chance is examine the problems with the Union and how Brexit can be a chance for reforms which can help repair them.

Payne: What did you think of the Leave and Remain campaigns? Why was Leave successful?

Verhofstadt: The Leave campaign purely used migration and specifically the fear of migration as their main argument. The Remain campaign tried to use the negative economic fallout [of Brexit] as their main argument.

The more emotional and geopolitical arguments for Britain remaining in the Union were never raised during the whole campaign. The most negative thing about Brexit is on the geopolitical level. Imagine that you wake up in the morning as a political leader in Beijing and you hear Britain has walked away from the European Union — you'd be saying 'oh wow, that's the weakening of European countries'. The negative geopolitical consequences were never discussed.

But every analysis we can make now of what the Leave and Remain campaigns did or didn't do is history. It's the future that's important.

El fascismo no volverá, pero la actual crisis institucional es sorprendentemente parecida a la de la República de Weimar

FINANCIAL TIMES.- ...probably fascism will not return because it was after all a product of its times. But the racism and anti-immigrant feeling at its heart never went away. They became less acceptable to voice for a while, a trend which may now be going into reverse.

There is at least one other crucial respect in which the interwar years and ours mirror one another uncomfortably. What we should probably be thinking about is not so much who became a fascist as who lost faith in parliamentary government, in its checks and balances and basic freedoms.

Underpinning the rise of fascism was a profound crisis of liberal democracy. The real lesson waiting to be learned is from this interwar crisis of democratic institutions.

Before the first world war, people fought hard to expand the powers of parliaments and enshrine constitutions. Afterwards, with startling speed, these things lost their allure.

Across Europe, many blamed the power of the legislature for society’s woes and wanted to see more power in the hands of a single leader. Parliaments were written off as façades that rubber-stamped what unaccountable lobbies and elites demanded.

The most striking parallel of all: political parties moved to the extremes and spoke about one another as if they were fundamentally illegitimate. Judiciary and police became politicised. It is this crisis of institutions that provides the most striking parallel between Weimar and the US today.

Dictatorship never went away and may even be coming back. The latest example is in Turkey where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s assault on the media and the universities marks a new low for basic freedoms in his country. But fascism was always about more than the dictators. Indeed, as the conservative political thinker Michael Oakeshott wrote decades ago, it is a kind of liberal illusion to focus on the figure of the dictator, as though one person was the only problem.

The real problems lie in the dictator’s shadow, in the conditions that enable the leader’s rise. The hollowing out of those basic institutions without which no modern state or society can govern itself, the extremism of political discourse — these things are already with us. And seem set to persist in the US.| Mark Mazower

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¿Por qué los americanos no están encantados con la política de Obama si ha sido un 'éxito' como se dice en Europa?

Siendo buenos, y negarlo es ridículo, están muy lejos de lo que se espera de una economía que ha tenido un estímulo monetario y fiscal superior a $24,7 billones en ocho años. La deuda ha aumentado un 121% con Obama y el crecimiento es el más pobre en décadas, menos de la mitad de su potencial.

Por un lado, han salido más de 11 millones de personas de la fuerza de trabajo, llevando la participación en el mercado laboral a niveles de 1978, y es completamente falso que se explique por la demografía. EEUU tiene una demografía similar a la de Reino Unido y su participación laboral es casi diez puntos inferior. Además, se ha reducido en casi todos los segmentos de edad (muy relevante entre 25 y 35 años).

En octubre de 2016 salieron de la fuerza laboral 425.000 trabajadores, el nivel más alto de la serie histórica, alcanzando un total de 94,6 millones de norteamericanos en edad de trabajar que ni participan en el sistema ni buscan trabajo. Eso muestra un índice de participación laboral de 62,8%, no visto desde 1978. Por lo tanto, un desempleo bajo se contrapone a una participación laboral paupérrima. Además, el número de ciudadanos norteamericanos que suplementa su renta con cupones de comida (food stamps) se ha duplicado de 20 millones a más de 40.

El empleo temporal se sitúa en 18,2% (menos de 35 horas semanales), es decir, niveles considerados de recesión. En época de crecimiento, EEUU siempre ha tenido una temporalidad inferior al 16,6%. En la recesión de 2001 era del 17% y en 2008 el máximo del 20%. Con Obama y el mayor estímulo de la historia sólo se ha reducido la temporalidad ligeramente al 18,2% y eso hundiendo la mencionada participación laboral.

El dato de octubre publicado la semana pasada mostraba una destrucción de empleos fijos de 103.000 y creación de empleo temporal de 90.000. A propósito, cuando piensen en empleo fijo y temporal en EEUU, piensen en condiciones de flexibilidad que aquí no imaginaríamos jamás.

Desde 2009, duplicando la deuda, ha caído la renta media de los hogares en todos los segmentos (la mediana de $55.000 a $54.000 y el segmento más pobre de $13.000 a $12.000) y los salarios reales continúan a niveles de 2008. Encima, la implantación del llamado Obamacare (Affordable Care Act) ha supuesto que el coste medio de una póliza se dispare hasta un 25%, haciendo una sanidad pública cara e ineficiente aún más cara.

Para acabar de desanimar, en los últimos cinco años el crecimiento anual de productividad ha sido de 0,6% de media, el más pobre desde 1978.

Por lo tanto, no es tan “sorprendente” la falta de euforia ante una nueva administración demócrata. Se entiende mejor cuando se diseccionan los datos de empleo y se ponen en el contexto del mayor estímulo fiscal y monetario de la historia y de haber duplicado la deuda.

Y es que, si con semejante chute de adrenalina “sólo” se ha conseguido esto, imaginen el riesgo que percibe un ciudadano fuera de Nueva York o Los Angeles.

(...)

Es cierto que la crisis fue muy importante, pero que casi ningún dato haya recuperado niveles de época de crecimiento es la evidencia de un fracaso que se refleja en el descontento del votante. Pero es mucho más preocupante pensar que la solución a este pobre historial sea repetirlo con Clinton. Y aterrador que la “alternativa” sea el populismo rancio y proteccionista de Trump. Por lo tanto, ante “susto” o “muerte”, sin duda yo prefiero susto. | Daniel Lacalle

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