Monthly Archives: December 2013

Objavljeno v Financah 17. septembra 2007

Izboljšati državo ali zamenjati ljudstvo?

Gospod Mića Mrkaić kot mantro ponavlja tezo o državni podpori kot vzroku za vse težave tega sveta. Zlo, v katerega prepričuje svoje bralce so poleg države še paraziti umetniki, sindikati in ljudje, delojemalci. Bralec dobi vtis, da je Slovenija nekak preostanek komunističnega etatizma v sicer svobodnem svetu, kjer neomejeno vladajo tržne zakonitosti.

Ta teza je empirična laž. O tem pričajo ZDA, kjer sicer vulgarni ideologi to misel prodajajo kot kavbojski mit, v praksi pa ZDA intervenirajo in podpirajo, če je potrebno tudi hollywoodsko proizvodnjo filma. Le od svoje konkurence zahtevajo, da umakne zaščite. Žal Mrkaič ni izjema, tudi razni LDS-ovi pooblaščenci za kulturo so imeli »državne seske« za poglavitni problem.

Škodljivost tega cenenega populizem ni samo v razširjanju ideološke laži, ampak kot vsaka populistična ideologija tudi ta prikriva prave probleme. Nenehno kazanja s prstom na umetnike, socialno državo, sindikate in na zaposlene kot na nesposobne parazite, onemogoča razpravo o pravem problemu, o kakovosti naše države. Vprašanje, ali je ta država slaba in ali je nujno tako, se sploh ne zastavi.

Če bi država bila tako zlo potem tudi prava ne bi bilo. Potem bi bile idealne države Nigerija, Liberija, Irak takoj po okupaciji in nekoč Srbija. Tu se, vsaj teoretično, Mrkaić strinja s Kardeljem, ki je v teoriji odpravljal državo, kot nekaj a-priori nesprejemljivega.

Državo vodi politika in to bolj ali manj kvalitetno. Empirično ugotovljeno dejstvo je, da je naša država najslabše kar imamo. Medtem, ko se Slovenija po delavnosti, izobrazbi, produktivnosti, varnosti uvršča znatno više, je po kakovost države na 47. mestu. To samo potrjuje ugotovitev tujcev, da je naša primerjalna prednost kakovost, izobraženost, delavnost, podjetnost njenega prebivalstva, gotovo pa ne kakovost države.

Politiki in druge družbene elite so običajno nosilci zaščite javnih interesov. Pri nas ni tako. Dobri pogoji za gospodarjenje sicer niso edini javni interes, kar izhaja iz miselne matrice, kjer je država vedno nekaj slabega, zasebna lastnina pa vedno nekaj odličnega. Tisto kar velja za gospodarstvo velja tudi za druge dejavnosti, denimo za kulturo. Nizka kakovost države se kaže tudi ko država ne uvidi, da kultura postaja pomemben del gospodarstva in da kot izjema na trgu potrebuje poseben režim, zaščito. Četudi jo njeno širše okolje, EU, v to nenehno prepričuje.

V novih demokracijah elite na verjamejo v javni interes. Zato imamo politike, ki temu interesu bolj škodujejo kot ga ščitijo. Temu primerni so potem tudi uradniki, ki bi morali neko določeno politiko izvajati, pa je ne, ali pa jo slabo. Riba pač vedno smrdi pri glavi.

Vzemimo film. Imamo Filmski sklad, ki bi moral omogočati pogoje za kvalitetno produkcijo, distribucijo in razvoj filma in avdio vizualne kulture. Tako je v vseh »starih«, tudi največjih evropskih državah. O nedavna tudi na Hrvaškem. Naša država pa tega ne zna ali/in noče. Raje se ukvarja z državnim producentstvom, to je z vmešavanjem politike v filmske posle, v scenaristiko, produkcijo, celo post produkcijo. Prejšnje vlade so to počenjale pod mizo, diskretno. Zdajšnja gre do konca. Seveda to upravljanje ne more biti drugačno kot nekvalitetno, saj to delajo politični birokrati in samozvani eksperti s posebnimi političnimi pooblastili, skratka klani in ne strokovnjaki. Država namreč za te politike ne predstavlja nujnega instrumenta politike, ampak zlo samo, ki bi ga pravzaprav bilo treba odpraviti. Ker pa se to ne da izvesti do konca, jo je treba kot volilni plen, fevd, zlorabiti in oropati. Država je kot svinja, kjer so politiki urejevalci reda okrog njenih seskov, ki jih ljubosumno čuvajo zase in za svoje kliente.

Nekritični apologeti vsega domnevno ameriškega, ki se ne sramujejo norega redukcionizma in kot edino merilo kakovosti vsega, tudi filma in umetnosti dopuščajo uspeh na blagajni ali »box officu«, pogosto tako pretiravajo, da njihova servilna proameriškost za Ameriko samo ni sprejemljiva. Kar kažejo tudi trenutne ameriške kritike stanja svobode v naših medijih. To dvomljivo proameriškost izvažajo misijonarji, diplomanti ali post diplomanti na ameriških ekonomskih fakultetah. Kot provincialni nepristni »Američani« imajo pač tipična obeležja vseh konvertitov in »poturic«: farsično fanatičnost, prezir lastnega okolja in agresivnost.

Pametni srbski igralec Miki Manojlović pravi, da filma v Evropi ni, ker ga politiki ne rabijo več, obstaja le še v nerazvitih okoljih, kot je Srbija. V Sloveniji, pravi, ga že ni več. Naše nove elite filma niso hotele, paradoksalno, od demokratizacije in osamosvojitve naprej.

Morda, gledališče, opero, slikarstvo, skratka tradicionalne umetnosti še potrebujejo. To so statusni simboli, potrebni vsem parvenijem, kot mesta, kjer se lahko kažejo v svojih novih oblačilih. Film je za plebs, za ljudstvo, za vsakogar, kar je danes prezirano. Berite kaj si o teh ljudeh, o večini ljudi, o neizjemnih ljudeh, o ljudeh, ki zgolj delajo, ki hodijo v službo, o »povprečnežih« dejansko o ljudeh, ki niso dovolj spretni ali brezobzirni, da bi obogateli, misli gospod Mićo Mrkaić.

Nekoč je poslanec Evropskega parlamenta, sarkozijevec, nekdanji minister za kulturo in pravosodje Francije Jacques Toubon dejal, da se motijo tisti, ki pričakujejo, da bo evropska kultura močnejša, ko bodo vzhodne države stopile v Unijo. Obratno bo, je trdil. Tudi Španija in Portugalska, tudien nekdanji diktaturi, sta potrebovali desetletje in več, da sta se naučili evropskih manir in spoznali, da trg ne bo rešil vseh problemov v kulturi.

Edino česar ne razumem je, zakaj mi tako rinemo na Vzhod, saj smo vendar imeli delno tržno, celo delujočo ekonomijo, nismo bili za zaveso, edini smo bili celo nekje vmes. Tudi zemljepisno in kulturno smo bolj na Zahodu kot na Vzhodu. Za to neumnost ni več odgovorna naša geopolitična lega, ampak je zanjo odločilna naša volja. S tem kažemo, kdo dejansko smo.

Res je, da se redukcionistični demagogi niso pojavili šele z vulgarnimi ekonomicisti. Tudi revolucionarni marksizem ni bil nič drugega. Zdaj smo pač v regresivnem obdobju vulgarne kopije razsvetljenstva, le da je »razum« zamenjala »ekonomija«. Vsaj na Divjem Vzhodu, kamor se z našimi »ekonomisti – filozofi« brez dlake na jeziku vred, za vsako ceno želimo priključiti.

 

Igor Koršič

Dobro plačana kolonizacija Slovenije (in EU)

Slovenia: Bank tests treated as military secret

30.12.13 @ 09:18

  1. BY BORUT MEKINA

LJUBLJANA – Bank stress tests indicate that Slovenian lenders do not need a bailout, but private consultancies played a controversial role in the evaluation.

The test results, published last month and accompanied by positive statements from the Slovenian government, the Bank of Slovenia and the European Commission, say Slovenia can recapitalise its banking sector without international help.

But the role of financial consultancies, Oliver Wyman and Roland Berger, and auditors, Deloitte and Ernst & Young, in the exercise has prompted questions on lack of transparency and conflict of interest.

The EU commission and the European Central Bank (ECB) blessed the arrangements.

According to a press statement by the Slovenian central bank, the “scope, conditions and performers of asset quality review and stress-tests were determined by [an] intersector commission after consultation with [the] European Commission and European Central Bank.”

The stress test report on the central bank’s website notes that the tests were “closely monitored by the international organisations, constituted of the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the European Banking Authority. These institutions ensured international standards were met and supported the design of the macroeconomic scenarios.”

The bank also says that due to lack of time, the ongoing credit crunch and prolonged negotiations with the EU institutions, it was forced to hire the “suggested” consultancies without a public tender and using a legal procedure normally reserved for arms procurement contracts.

The procedure means that, aside from the results of the tests, all other information, such as the methodology used and the fees paid to the consultancies, have the formal status of military secrets.

Last summer, several Slovenian economists signed a petition demanding that the “credible methodology” – to use the EU commission’s phrase – be made public.

It never was.

Instead, the terms of reference and the whole process underlying the test results was negotiated between the Slovenian central bank and EU officials behind closed doors.

To carry out the tests, some 250 consultants spent four months in Slovenia reviewing eight of its banks.

The personnel, mainly from London, had little knowledge of Slovenian institutions or the Slovenian language.

The exercise was carried out with extensive help from the Slovenian central bank itself, which effectively repeated its own earlier evaluation.

The central bank estimated in October that the cost of the new test will be over €21 million. The initial estimate does not include the consultancies’ possible overtime and additional expenses, which are to be filed later.

By comparison, Spain, whose economy is 40 times larger than Slovenia’s and whose banking sector is 80 times bigger, paid consultancy firms €31 million to do a similar job in 2012.

Pushing down the price

The consultancies had a crucial role in determining how much Slovenian taxpayers will have to pay to put the country’s lenders back onto a stable footing.

Various Slovenian institutions had previously assessed the recapitalisation needs of three Slovenian state banks to be no more than €1.5 billion.

But the new stress tests cited €3 billion.

The figure is higher because the consultancies evaluated some real estate and other assets at their potential liquidation price.

The Slovenian central bank said the new test was “conservative” in its approach.

This is good news for potential investors, but bad news for Slovenia’s taxpayers, who now have to pay twice as much as before to fix the problem.

It could also spell bad news for other EU countries’ tax payers – the Slovenian stress test is likely to act as a template for the ECB’s upcoming review of the eurozone’s 130 top lenders.

The ECB review is also using Oliver Wyman.

For his part, the former Slovenian central bank governor, Mitja Gaspari, has estimated that if the same criteria are used at European level next year, the eurozone recapitalisation price will not be €100 billion, as expected, but approximately six times higher.

Potential conflicts of interest

Meanwhile, the Slovenian consultancy contracts and the private firms’ corporate structure pose questions on potential conflict of interest.

Back in 2012, the consultancy European Resolution Capital Partners (ERC) was hired by the Slovenian finance ministry – again, on the “recommendation” of the EU commission – to help Slovenia set up a bad bank and to perform an asset quality review of the three state banks.

The firm pronounced its verdict on the bank’s assets based on full access to commercially privileged information.

But now, Ovington Capital, an ERC offshoot, is creating an investment fund which will trade the bad bank’s debt.

In other words, ERC first set the price and now it is buying the assets.

Oliver Wyman, the New-York-based firm hired this year for the new test, flagged up its potential conflict of interest in its contract with the Slovenian central bank.

“It is the company’s practice to serve multiple clients within industries, including those with potentially opposing interests. Accordingly, the company may have served, may currently be serving or may in the future serve other clients whose interests may be adverse to those of the client,” the document says.

The company bound itself to “maintaining the confidentiality of each client,” but there is no way for the Slovenian authorities to make sure it does.

Oliver Wyman is part of the Marsh & McLennan group.

According to a 2011 study by the American Institute for Political Studies, the group has 105 companies in 20 different tax-haven countries and paid zero profit tax in the US in 2010.

Other international firms, which co-operated with Oliver Wyman in Slovenia – real estate firms Cushman & Wakefield, Jones Lang LaSalle, Colliers International and CBRE – also have “potentially opposing interests.”

Cushman & Wakefield, for instance, is owned by one of the biggest Italian investment funds, Exor.

Wrong medicine?

The panic about Slovenia becoming the next Cyprus has turned out to be unfounded.

This is shown not just by the new stress test, but also by other reports.

Earlier in December, the Brussels-based think tank Lisbon Council and the oldest German bank, Berenberg, said, in their Euro Plus Monitor report, that Slovenia is the most resilient country in the eurozone when it comes to financial shocks.

“Topping the ranking is Slovenia, a country which had been tipped as the next bailout candidate after Cyprus and still faces one of the highest borrowing costs in the eurozone,” the study says.

It adds: “Slovenia’s public and private debt levels are low, as befits a country with still modest per-capita GDP. Slovenia also runs a sizeable current account surplus and the banking system is small compared to the economy. Its problems seem more than manageable, whether it will need eurozone support or not.”

By many other standards, Slovenia is not really the healthiest euro-country.

International analysts and the EU commission usually say that state-owned companies and state ownership more broadly caused the country’s economic problems.

But the real reason is the government’s wrong-headed economic policies.

In the economic boom years of 2004 to 2007, when Slovenia joined the eurozone, the country was flooded by cheap euro money.

The government was not prepared for it.

It did not respond with countermeasures, such as saving schemes, to cool the economy.

Instead, new money was borrowed, taxes were cut, big projects were started and banks rolled out credit to investors.

Private sector and state debt rose from €15 billion to €33 billion in just four years. Ironically, state banks were, in that period, the most cautious. Their loan-to-credit ratio was at that time 1:1.3, while foreign banks in Slovenia, like Hypo, Raifeissen or Unicredit had a ratio of between 1:2 and 1:2.5.

Despite this, the EU commission in its macro-economic recommendations this year insisted that Slovenia privatises its banking sector.

The Slovenian government has also promised to sell 15 other state-owned companies, ranging from telecoms to energy and the Ljubljana airport.

The money will be used to lower the country’s state debt, which has now risen from 50 percent of GDP to some 75 percent of GDP.

Its debt climbed, in large part, due to the Oliver Wyman-dictated €3 billion bank recapitalisation.

The Slovenian state has no other option but to sell off assets.

But if the timeframe is short and the assets seized from banks are sold at liquidation price, the bill for Slovenian taxpayers will be even higher than it had to be.

At the same time, investors – such as firms in the Marsh & McLennan group “whose interests may be adverse to those of the client [Slovenia]” – will get an opportunity to snap up Slovenia’s crown jewels at bargain rates.

Borut Mekina is a journalist writing for the Slovenian weekly Mladina

Ideološke papige?

 

Delo, 28. 12. 2013.

Intervju s še enim sociologom:

“A zlasti na levici je pogostnost nastajanja novih strank precej velika. Kako gledate na to?

Med tistimi organiziranimi vstajniki, ki so razmišljali o strankarskem nastopu, so bila pred slabim letom dni tri vsebinska jedra: liberalno-socialdemokratsko, radikalno levičarsko in meščansko- kulturniško.

Iz prvega je nastala stranka Solidarnost, iz drugega pa Iniciativa za demokratični socializem, ki bo verjetno tudi nastopila na volitvah.

Teoretično imajo oboji precej odprte možnosti, uspeh pa bo odvisen od tega, ali bodo ponudili izvedljiv program, ali jim bo uspelo prepričati ljudi, ki tonejo v apatijo, in ali jih bodo pripravljeni tudi poslušati in razumeti. Odločilno bo, ali bodo sestopili iz intelektualnih oblakov in se zmogli približati navadnim ljudem, takšnim, kakršni so.”

Verjetno je že nastopil čas, ko je globokoumnih razlagalcev, raznih predalčkarjev, forumov, simpozijev in zbornikov več, kot je  primerkov vrste, ki jo razlagajo. Razumem novinarje, da gredo k svojim kolegom sociologom, saj kdo pa bo to razlagal, če ne družboslovci!  (Tudi nuklearko razlagajo nuklearni fiziki, mar ne!) Razumem tudi naslovljene eksperte, ki, ko enkrat že vprašani, morajo nekaj povedati, drugače nam sporočajo, da pač njihove stroke ali pa oni sami niso kaj prida.

Potlej ne preseneča, da eksperti povedo več o trendih in obvezni literaturi, s katero jih zalagajo njihovi “revolucionarni” profesorji ter o trenutno prevladujočih idologijah na njihovih oddelkih in katedrah kot o samem raziskovalnem predmetu.  Človek bi si želel, da bi, namesto da sprašujejo drug drugega o nečem, za kar se zdi, da je nek pojav na Marsu, o katerem ne moremo pridobiti jasnih podatkov, da bi ti ljudje, novinarji, sociologi, psihologi, filozofi … povprašali primerke proučevanja same, o tem kje se vidijo, kam po njihovo sodijo, ali imajo meščansko kulturniške ali proletarsko radikalne ali pak socialdemokratsko liberalne vrednote, politične cilje, porekla, miselne in siceršnje navade? In vprašali bi jih lahko, čemu le služujo te vstaje? In ali so vstaje sploh še opravilno sposobne? In če ne, čemu po njihovem mnenju niso?  Morda se je pa skotila v nederjih te zakotne in filisterske  province  kaka nova politična vrsta, morda celo izvirna politična misel, prebilsk, opazka, kak nov pojem, nalepkica? Saj so pojmi,  ki jih omenjajo, končno nekako zgodovinsko in ideološko, da ne rečem predpotopno strankarsko ideološko pogojeni.  Če bi jih namesto ponavljanja ideoloških kategorij s smetišča zgodovine zanimali pojavi sami,  bi lahko razvili tudi malo strastnega raziskovalnega duha namesto zdolgočasenega ponavljanja do onemoglosti prežvečenga. Potem bi kot botaniki, ki najdejo kako novo rastlino, laho celo spisati novo etiketo, odprli nov vzorčni lonček, epruveto ali predalček  in se lotili opisa dotlej še ne videnih primerkov. Ampak teh strasti jih ne učijo in  posledično jih take skušnjave ne dajejo. Zato vse primerke zmečejo v svoje tri zaprašene in starikave ideološke lončke.

Gnus

Ste občutili jezo, sovraštvo? Ne. Občutili smo gnus

V slovenski tranziciji je šlo vse k vragu takrat, ko se je začelo vse vrteti okrog lastnine.

Franček Drenovec

Sobotna priloga
sob, 14.12.2013, 06:00
Kaj ti bo država, če sploh ne veš, kaj z njo početi? Če sploh ne veš, da se z njo da kaj početi?

 

Pridružujem se odporu proti napovedani razprodaji slovenskih podjetij in infrastrukture tujcem. Pa ne zato, ker bi bila lastnina prav posebno pomembna. Lastnina odloča v nekapitalističnih družbah, odločala je v fevdalizmu in pogosto v kakšnem od »realnih« komunizmov. V kapitalizmu bi morale odločati sposobnosti ljudi in družbe, da prispevajo k napredku produktivnosti in blaginje. V slovenski tranziciji je šlo vse k vragu takrat, ko se je začelo vse vrteti okrog lastnine – povsem nepovezano s produktivnimi sposobnostmi in potenciali novih kapitalistov. Napovedana razprodaja državnega kapitala nas zanima predvsem zato, ker označuje veliko širšo zgodbo.

***

V tej zgodbi slišimo veliko o terorju »Evrope« in »Bruslja«, kar je seveda nesmisel. V Evropi vodijo igro še vedno nacionalne države, ki vzdržujejo s tem namenom Bruselj kadrovsko in institucionalno ravno prav podhranjen (ter si v teh neoliberalnih časih niti ne želimo, da bi se ta, zaenkrat še tretjerazredni evropski Washington še okrepil). Kar prihaja iz Bruslja z neko vsebino, prihaja vedno iz kakšne vplivnejše nacionalne prestolnice, zdaj v glavnem iz Berlina. Naši sistemi so le naravnani tudi na določeno centralno evropsko odločanje in ker tega zdaj, ko gre bolj zares, pač ni, je vskočil kot nadomestna Evropa Berlin

Nemški pristop h krizi evropske periferije pa tudi ni nikakršna zarota. Nemške horizonte opredeljujejo ZDA, Kitajska in drugi taki, ne njena zahojena periferija. Nemci so nanjo le besni, ker se njene neumnosti prevajajo v skupni ekonomski in denarni prostor – potem ko najprej prezrejo, da so vzroki na obeh straneh in verjetno še najbolj na njihovi lastni, v njihovem lastnem polzenju v neoliberalne velike finance, ki jih morajo (?) zdaj reševati.

Žalostno je, kako je Nemčija redefinirala svojo evropsko pozicijo v navadno vihtenje grobe moči, ki ne more uspeti. Lahko upoštevamo, da so Nemci v mednarodnih odnosih še sorazmerni amaterji, saj jim je bila lastna zunanja politika po drugi svetovni vojni prepovedana. Zato pa imajo dovolj izkušenj z zunanjimi politikami drugih: s primitivnim roparskim pohodom Anglije in Francije po prvi svetovni vojni, ter z zrelim in produktivnim odnosom ZDA po drugi. Anglija in Francija sta bili po prvi vojni že velesili v zatonu in kljub zmagi tedaj samo še v impotentni obrambni drži, medtem ko so bile ZDA po drugi vojni družba v vzponu, z vizijo in strategijo. Sedanje nemško lomastenje po evropski periferiji je primerljivo zgolj s tistim davnim lomastenjem propadajoče evropske noblese po Nemčiji – kar naj velja kot informacija o tem, s kakšnim novim gospodarjem imamo v resnici opravka.

***

A na Nemčijo nimamo vpliva. Obrnimo se raje k nam samim. Cilj »programa za izognitev programu«, ki so nam ga poslali iz Bruslja, je zagotovitev vračanja zunanjih posojil. Dolgovi podjetij, nabrani v bankah, se bodo podržavili, za kar bo treba javne finance okrepiti s poviševanjem davkov in zniževanjem vseh drugih, normalnih javnih izdatkov. Vladi so naložili tudi obsežno predajo njenega premoženja tujcem (tako, na primer, da bi prodali slovenski državni Telekom nemškemu državnemu Telekomu; »privatizacija« se reče samo za lepše, cilj ni privatno, cilj je tuje). Za sanacijo samih podjetij pa bo treba zniževati plače in preusmerjati dodano vrednost v dobičke za dokapitalizacijo in razdolževanje.

Vsaj del navedenega ima nesporno ekonomsko logiko. Slovenija je v zadnjem desetletju zares propadla, korenita preobrazba je nujna. Ampak kakšna? Tujci pristopajo k obstoječemu stanju slovenske družbe in dajejo navodila za preživetje in utrditev (in vračanje dolgov) te strukture in teh ljudi. Njihove »strukturne reforme« prav odstranjujejo možnosti za prestrukturiranje. Zakaj bi se v podjetjih trudili za tehnološki in poslovni napredek, če lahko (isti stari »podjetniki«) preprosto znižajo plače? Slišimo, da bo treba izobraževanje Slovencev prilagoditi obstoječemu gospodarstvu in prenesti več teže na strokovno šolstvo; univerze so za druge, na za nas. V zdravstvu, ki je v evropskih primerjavah že zdaj pri samem dnu, bo treba še nižje. O pravni državi zvemo le to, da bo treba tudi tu varčevati (tu še bistveno bolj, ko vračunamo tistih par sto milijonov novih daril prijateljem gradbincem za novo veliko, lepo sodno palačo).

Nihče si ne dela utvar, da bodo te politike obrnile trende navzgor. V resnici prav preprečujejo tehnološko, poslovno, socialno in miselno spreminjanje, ki lahko edino popelje Slovenijo v nov napredek. Uničujejo rast in uničujejo razvoj. Ampak roko na srce, s tem se pa tujcem ni treba ukvarjati. Tujci hočejo samo svoj denar nazaj (in še kakšen drug lahek zaslužek, ko jim ga že nudimo). Nemško vlado zanima Nemčija, ameriško Amerika. Za Slovenijo moramo poskrbeti sami. Saj smo se osamosvojili, saj imamo svojo državo.

V tej državi pa je vse, kar se dogaja, samo to slepo ustrezanje tujemu interesu in pohlepu! Kako so v parlamentu spet polni energije in zanosa, odkar imajo po štirih letih zblojenosti spet vizijo in cilj – ta cilj! Kaj ti bo država, če sploh ne veš, kaj z njo početi? Če sploh ne veš, da se z njo da kaj početi?

***

Nekaj stvari je treba razčistiti. V zaostajajoči družbi, v kateri so moderne produktivne, ekonomske in druge strukture še manj razvite in utrjene kot kje v tujini, bodo v danem trenutku, v kratkem roku, znali narediti prav po definiciji skoraj vse zahtevnejše stvari bolje tujci! Če si razlagamo kapitalizem tako ekstremno kretensko, kot da je merilo vsega samo trg, je ekonomski optimum za vsako zaostajajočo družbo prav po definiciji stanje kolonije – večno zaostajajoče kolonije –, položaje vodilnih elit pa morajo prav po definiciji zasesti tujci (a zato, ker so države »suverene«, še s kakšno domačo politično navlako).

Zaradi tega je razvoj zaostajajočih družb – tam, kjer tak razvoj je – vedno zahteven, zapleten in vijugav, pogosto konflikten boj proti toku za uveljavljanje lastnih elit, lastnih kapitalistov, lastnih inženirjev, znanstvenikov in učiteljev, počasi, mučno, vedno boljših, dokler niso enakovredni tujcem. To je prav definicija prebijanja iz nerazvitosti! Govorimo o najbolj elementarni politični, socialni, psihološki motivaciji, ki je poganjala in poganja še naprej vse zgodovine kapitalizma v Evropi, Aziji, Ameriki in povsod. V tej današnji bedni, zarukani Sloveniji nič več.

 

***

Slovenska tranzicija je bila najprej zgodba o uspehu in potem o neuspehu. V tem njenem drugem delu so bolezni »mlade demokracije« končno opravile svoje. Sestavljanje nacionalnega vodenja – nacionalnih elit – v demokraciji je zahteven proces in veliko prej, preden smo ga bili kot družba sposobni opraviti, nam je ušel z vajeti. Prek še neobvladanih mehanizmov demokracije je izbruhnila v sfere oblasti vsa stara, prej še potlačena in prezrta slovenska provincialnost in zaostalost. V zadnjem desetletju se je korak za korakom, opazno in neopazno, uničevalo vse doslej doseženo slovensko moderno, napredno, neprovincialno.

Nenadoma smo odkrili, kako je upravljanje družb pravzaprav enostavno – nič bolj zahtevno kot upravljanje nekakšne vaške ekonomije z drobnim podjetništvom. To sliko so nam še utrdili »mladi« neoliberalci s svojimi prevodi iz velikega belega sveta. Predstavo o vaški ekonomiji so nam potrdili še s čisto znanostjo: o tem, da določa uspešnost družb v kapitalizmu zgolj trg in da povzroča vpletanje države več škode kot koristi. Posel politikov je samo podpiranje zasebnih interesov (tudi svojih lastnih). Skupni, družbeni, nacionalni interes lahko zagovarjajo samo barabe in komunisti.

Ko je prišel potem v deželo denar, je steklo v tem primitivnem ideološkem in političnem okolju privatiziranje: prosto, svobodno, brez vpletanja državnih politik, v panogah in podjetjih, ki jih je bilo najlažje zgrabiti, a ki so bila zato tudi razvojno povsem votla. Svoja nova središča ekonomske moči smo dobili v najbolj obrobnih in za poganjanje rasti nesposobnih delih gospodarstva, in na to novo moč so se prilepili še politiki. Kot sta velela mladost in znanost, so se pustili voditi kapitalu in trgu – temu kapitalu in temu trgu, do neizbežnega zloma.

Kolaps je bil zares hud. V štirih letih krize so se zamenjale že štiri vlade. Na ulicah je izbruhnila vstaja, padla sta dva (ampak samo dva) mogočneža. Bila so štiri leta beganja in tavanja, brez orientirjev, brez predstave o tem, kako naprej – kako naprej tako, da se kljub vsemu nič ne spremeni. Dokler si ni končno našla rešitev.

S prehodom elit v kompradorske ali kvizlinške prehajamo v »zadnjo fazo« svojega tranzicijskega razkroja. Ko so v sferi elit končno dojeli še sami, da države ne znajo voditi, so si našli nekoga drugega, da jo bo vodil zanje. In jim dovolil, da se obdržijo na vsaj formalnih položajih oblasti kot njegovi zanesljivi »klienti« (ali z bolj znano tujko: marionete).

Slovenija ni totalno nerazvita. Vzrok podreditve ni, da sami ne znamo (saj smo znali to, kar zdaj uničujemo in prodajamo, nekoč kar sami ustvariti). Tujcem se podrediš zato, da odbiješ domačo konkurenco; da tisti domači, ki ne znajo, odbijejo tiste, ki znajo. Svoj projekt prodajajo kot tisto sveže, novo, na kar smo vsi čakali. Zato se samo spomnimo, kako so pred krizo na enak način prodajali tudi svoj izvirni »mladi« provincialni neoliberalizem, ki je krizo prav povzročil – večinoma iste stranke, isti ljudje, ideologi in ideologije.

***
Slovenska polpretekla zgodovina ni bila zgodovina sovjetskega bloka, v Sloveniji imamo skoraj petdesetletno izkušnjo velike družbene dinamike. Proces je bil zagotovo »specifičen«, a ne bistveno bolj, kot drugi sočasni procesi v državah evropskega obrobja izven sovjetske cone, po predhodnem stoletnem relativnem pogrezanju pod kapo takratnega liberalizma. V tem dolgem ciklu smo se (tudi) v Sloveniji končno prebili iz spon vseobvladujoče, arhaične kmečke ekonomije, v intenzivni modernizaciji, ko je šlo tako dolgo vse samo navzgor, vedno na bolje, tudi v tranziciji, do sedanje krize.

V tej krizi se lomi ves ta veliki, dolgi val. Njegov poganjajoči naboj – dinamična deagrarizacija do ravni »srednje« industrializacije in zatem še prehod k tehnološko ekvivalentnim storitvam – je usihal že pred krizo. Usihanje je prekrilo zadolževanje in zato je bil končni prelom navzdol tako oster.

Na slovenskih ravneh materialne blaginje pač še ni »konca kapitalizma«, kot v razvitem svetu; še zdaleč nismo na koncu svojega zadnjega Kondratjevega (ali Wallersteinovega) cikla. V razkroju zadnjega desetletja je bil cikel samo prekinjen. Zdaj je na dnevnem redu nujno obnavljanje normalnosti in modernosti, da se vrnemo na pot naprej. Namesto tega pa gremo še v ta zadnji, zdaj že tako kričeče klišejski korak v brezno primitivizma in sistemske korupcije, po standardnih vzorcih nekdanjega latinskoameriškega banana kapitalizma.

Ekonomske in socialne politike nam že vodijo tujci – tiste, ki so v njihovem interesu, drugih pa ni. Pomembne javne institucije se predajajo v direktno upravljanje tujcem. Državno premoženje bodo prodali tujcem. Glede rasti in razvoja govorijo skoraj samo še o tujih naložbah. Politično mreženje se steka vse bolj v Bruselj, Berlin in še kam. Nad Janeza Janšo so se spravili vstajniki in KPK, zares pa je padel šele takrat, ko mu je – vsem na videz – odrekla podporo ena od tujih ambasad (ki ima na razpolago dovolj drugega, pri sebi vzgojenega in financiranega »kadra«).

»Outsourcing« najpomembnejših funkcij sistema je nedvoumen znak konca. Za vsak primer si prikličimo v spomin izvirnik, prototip – nekdanjo kompradorsko podreditev Latinske Amerike ZDA. Je odpravila korupcijo? Je ustvarila pravne države? Je prinesla kontinentu razvoj in napredek? Je podprla demokracijo? Ali prej fašizem? V Sloveniji dosegamo novo zgodovinsko dno, ki je zdaj zares primerljivo samo še s tistim iz leta 1941.

Morda še odstavek za tiste, ki niti ne razumejo dobro, v kaj se spuščajo. Kompradorstvo, ta zadnji obrat nesposobnih elit, ki jim daje novo veliko moč, a nič koristi ljudstvu, gre z roko v roki s fašizmom. Če še ne na začetku, pa na koncu. Je sploh treba navajati primere? Stare ali sodobne? Ne vem, če so prav vsi, ki so stopili v to igro, zares usposobljeni za barantanje s fašizmom. So pa drugi, ki že komaj čakajo.

***

Slovenci se radi obkladamo s tem, da smo hlapci. Kdor je hlapec, ne gradi svoje samozavesti in statusa na lastnih kvalitetah, temveč na kvalitetah svojega gospodarja. Več vreden je tisti, ki ima več vrednega gospodarja. Če je gospodar Slovenec, nastopi problem: če je lahko gospodar on, zakaj sem pa jaz hlapec? Tedaj se pokaže, da je nekaj narobe z menoj samim, namesto da bi bila krivda – nerešljivo, od boga dano – v vsem narodu. Za hlapce je zelo pomembno, da so gospodarji tujci, ne domači, ne sosedje.

To zgoraj je zelo ceneno psihologiziranje, ampak vsaj kakšno izkušnjo s simptomi nečesa takega pa le že vsi imamo. In lahko nadaljujemo: kako skrajno neobičajno je, če postane prav tak še značaj elit, značaj tistih, ki naj bi prav vodili in ukazovali – če preraste tu in tam nametano ljudsko hlapčevstvo še v kompradorstvo in kvizlinštvo elit. Zadnji tak propad slovenskih elit smo doživeli ob tuji okupaciji in odpravi dotedanje države leta 1941. Je možno, da se nam dogaja podobno v sedanji »mladi demokraciji«, v kateri je bila prav tako odpravljena stara država, ne pa še – zares – postavljena nova?

No, slovenska zgodovina je bila na koncu koncev predvsem prav nasprotna, v njej je bilo med (nekimi drugimi) Slovenci predvsem veliko ponosa, znanja in poguma. V tej zgodovini so Trubar in Dalmatin, Linhart in Zois, Prešeren, Hribar in Maister in potem že stotine takih in potem deset tisoči in sto tisoči, do naše »prve«, »druge« in »tretje osamosvojitve« (če izvzamemo tiste tiče, ki so dejansko razmišljali samo o zamenjavi gospodarja).

Danes se v Sloveniji spet razločujemo. Nekoč prej so ob podobnih delitvah obdali mesto Ljubljana z žico, da ne bi meščani ven hodili in kvarili pošteno ljudstvo. Zdaj so meje med zaostalostjo in naprednostjo seveda drugje, razpredene v gosto tkanem vzorcu prek vse dežele, počez čez vsako vas in mesto. Dejstvo je, da nismo več »enotni«. S tem se sprijaznimo. In se borimo za svojo naprednost! Scenarij, v katerem se ne borimo, je preveč katastrofičen.

***

Pred dobrim letom sem končal enega od svojih tekstov takole: da sem govoril z eno zadnjih še živečih prič tistega usodnega slovenskega aprila 1941, fašizma, nacizma, okupacije in razkosanja Slovenije. Slovenije ni bilo več. Komaj prispelega italijanskega komandanta so v Ljubljani pričakali sam gospod škof pa politiki, tisti, ki se niso umaknili v London ali v zasebnost, in še marsikateri poslovnež. S seboj so pripeljali dekleta v narodni noši. Tam so se znojili, gnetli in prerivali v prizadevanju za naklonjenost novega gospodarja … Svojega sogovornika sem vprašal: kaj ste si mislili, vi in vaši prijatelji, ob pogledu na to neizmerno bedo? Ste občutili jezo, sovraštvo? Dejal je: občutili smo gnus.

Zakaj niso kaznovani?

The Financial Crisis: Why Have No High-Level Executives Been Prosecuted?

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Five years have passed since the onset of what is sometimes called the Great Recession. While the economy has slowly improved, there are still millions of Americans leading lives of quiet desperation: without jobs, without resources, without hope.

Who was to blame? Was it simply a result of negligence, of the kind of inordinate risk-taking commonly called a “bubble,” of an imprudent but innocent failure to maintain adequate reserves for a rainy day? Or was it the result, at least in part, of fraudulent practices, of dubious mortgages portrayed as sound risks and packaged into ever more esoteric financial instruments, the fundamental weaknesses of which were intentionally obscured?

If it was the former—if the recession was due, at worst, to a lack of caution—then the criminal law has no role to play in the aftermath. For in all but a few circumstances (not here relevant), the fierce and fiery weapon called criminal prosecution is directed at intentional misconduct, and nothing less. If the Great Recession was in no part the handiwork of intentionally fraudulent practices by high-level executives, then to prosecute such executives criminally would be “scapegoating” of the most shallow and despicable kind.

But if, by contrast, the Great Recession was in material part the product of intentional fraud, the failure to prosecute those responsible must be judged one of the more egregious failures of the criminal justice system in many years. Indeed, it would stand in striking contrast to the increased success that federal prosecutors have had over the past fifty years or so in bringing to justice even the highest-level figures who orchestrated mammoth frauds. Thus, in the 1970s, in the aftermath of the “junk bond” bubble that, in many ways, was a precursor of the more recent bubble in mortgage-backed securities, the progenitors of the fraud were all successfully prosecuted, right up to Michael Milken.

Again, in the 1980s, the so-called savings-and-loan crisis, which again had some eerie parallels to more recent events, resulted in the successful criminal prosecution of more than eight hundred individuals, right up to Charles Keating. And again, the widespread accounting frauds of the 1990s, most vividly represented by Enron and WorldCom, led directly to the successful prosecution of such previously respectedCEOs as Jeffrey Skilling and Bernie Ebbers.

In striking contrast with these past prosecutions, not a single high-level executive has been successfully prosecuted in connection with the recent financial crisis, and given the fact that most of the relevant criminal provisions are governed by a five-year statute of limitations, it appears likely that none will be. It may not be too soon, therefore, to ask why.

One possibility, already mentioned, is that no fraud was committed. This possibility should not be discounted. Every case is different, and I, for one, have no opinion about whether criminal fraud was committed in any given instance.

But the stated opinion of those government entities asked to examine the financial crisis overall is not that no fraud was committed. Quite the contrary. For example, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, in its final report, uses variants of the word “fraud” no fewer than 157 times in describing what led to the crisis, concluding that there was a “systemic breakdown,” not just in accountability, but also in ethical behavior.

As the commission found, the signs of fraud were everywhere to be seen, with the number of reports of suspected mortgage fraud rising twenty-fold between 1996 and 2005 and then doubling again in the next four years. As early as 2004, FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker was publicly warning of the “pervasive problem” of mortgage fraud, driven by the voracious demand for mortgage-backed securities. Similar warnings, many from within the financial community, were disregarded, not because they were viewed as inaccurate, but because, as one high-level banker put it, “A decision was made that ‘We’re going to have to hold our nose and start buying the stated product if we want to stay in business.’”

Without giving further examples, the point is that, in the aftermath of the financial crisis, the prevailing view of many government officials (as well as others) was that the crisis was in material respects the product of intentional fraud. In a nutshell, the fraud, they argued, was a simple one. Subprime mortgages, i.e., mortgages of dubious creditworthiness, increasingly provided the chief collateral for highly leveraged securities that were marketed as AAA, i.e., securities of very low risk. How could this transformation of a sow’s ear into a silk purse be accomplished unless someone dissembled along the way?

While officials of the Department of Justice have been more circumspect in describing the roots of the financial crisis than have the various commissions of inquiry and other government agencies, I have seen nothing to indicate their disagreement with the widespread conclusion that fraud at every level permeated the bubble in mortgage-backed securities. Rather, their position has been to excuse their failure to prosecute high-level individuals for fraud in connection with the financial crisis on one or more of three grounds:

First, they have argued that proving fraudulent intent on the part of the high-level management of the banks and companies involved has been difficult. It is undoubtedly true that the ranks of top management were several levels removed from those who were putting together the collateralized debt obligations and other securities offerings that were based on dubious mortgages; and the people generating the mortgages themselves were often at other companies and thus even further removed. And I want to stress again that I have no opinion whether any given top executive had knowledge of the dubious nature of the underlying mortgages, let alone fraudulent intent.

But what I do find surprising is that the Department of Justice should view the proving of intent as so difficult in this case. Who, for example, was generating the so-called “suspicious activity reports” of mortgage fraud that, as mentioned, increased so hugely in the years leading up to the crisis? Why, the banks themselves. A top-level banker, one might argue, confronted with growing evidence from his own and other banks that mortgage fraud was increasing, might have inquired why his bank’s mortgage-based securities continued to receive AAAratings. And if, despite these and other reports of suspicious activity, the executive failed to make such inquiries, might it be because he did not want to know what such inquiries would reveal?

This, of course, is what is known in the law as “willful blindness” or “conscious disregard.” It is a well-established basis on which federal prosecutors have asked juries to infer intent, including in cases involving complexities, such as accounting rules, at least as esoteric as those involved in the events leading up to the financial crisis. And while some federal courts have occasionally expressed qualifications about the use of the willful blindness approach to prove intent, the Supreme Court has consistently approved it. As that Court stated most recently in Global-Tech Appliances, Inc. v. SEB S.A. (2011):

The doctrine of willful blindness is well established in criminal law. Many criminal statutes require proof that a defendant acted knowingly or willfully, and courts applying the doctrine of willful blindness hold that defendants cannot escape the reach of these statutes by deliberately shielding themselves from clear evidence of critical facts that are strongly suggested by the circumstances.

Thus, the department’s claim that proving intent in the financial crisis is particularly difficult may strike some as doubtful.

Second, and even weaker, the Department of Justice has sometimes argued that, because the institutions to whom mortgage-backed securities were sold were themselves sophisticated investors, it might be difficult to prove reliance. Thus, in defending the failure to prosecute high-level executives for frauds arising from the sale of mortgage-backed securities, Lanny Breuer, the then head of the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, told PBS:

In a criminal case…I have to prove not only that you made a false statement but that you intended to commit a crime, and also that the other side of the transaction relied on what you were saying. And frankly, in many of the securitizations and the kinds of transactions we’re talking about, in reality you had very sophisticated counterparties on both sides. And so even though one side may have said something was dark blue when really we can say it was sky blue, the other side of the transaction, the other sophisticated party, wasn’t relying at all on the description of the color.

Actually, given the fact that these securities were bought and sold at lightning speed, it is by no means obvious that even a sophisticated counterparty would have detected the problems with the arcane, convoluted mortgage-backed derivatives they were being asked to purchase. But there is a more fundamental problem with the above-quoted statement from the former head of the Criminal Division, which is that it totally misstates the law. In actuality, in a criminal fraud case the government is never required to prove—ever—that one party to a transaction relied on the word of another. The reason, of course, is that that would give a crooked seller a license to lie whenever he was dealing with a sophisticated buyer. The law, however, says that society is harmed when a seller purposely lies about a material fact, even if the immediate purchaser does not rely on that particular fact, because such misrepresentations create problems for the market as a whole. And surely there never was a situation in which the sale of dubious mortgage-backed securities created more of a problem for the marketplace, and society as a whole, than in the recent financial crisis.

The third reason the department has sometimes given for not bringing these prosecutions is that to do so would itself harm the economy. Thus, Attorney General Eric Holder himself told Congress:

It does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute—if you do bring a criminal charge—it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy.

To a federal judge, who takes an oath to apply the law equally to rich and to poor, this excuse—sometimes labeled the “too big to jail” excuse—is disturbing, frankly, in what it says about the department’s apparent disregard for equality under the law.

In fairness, however, Holder (who later claimed his comment was misconstrued) was referring to the prosecution of financial institutions, rather than their CEOs. Moreover, he might have also been influenced, as his department unquestionably was, by the adverse reaction to the Arthur Anderson case, where that accounting firm was forced out of business by a prosecution that was ultimately reversed on appeal. But if we are talking about prosecuting individuals, the excuse becomes entirely irrelevant; for no one that I know of has ever contended that a big financial institution would collapse if one or more of its high-level executives were prosecuted, as opposed to the institution itself.


Eric Holder; drawing by John Springs

Without multiplying examples further, my point is that the Department of Justice has never taken the position that all the top executives involved in the events leading up to the financial crisis were innocent; rather it has offered one or another excuse for not criminally prosecuting them—excuses that, on inspection, appear unconvincing. So, you might ask, what’s really going on here? I don’t claim to have any inside information about the real reasons why no such prosecutions have been brought, but I take the liberty of offering some speculations.

At the outset, however, let me say that I completely discount the argument sometimes made that no such prosecutions have been brought because the top prosecutors were often people who previously represented the financial institutions in question and/or were people who expected to be representing such institutions in the future: the so-called “revolving door.” In my experience, most federal prosecutors, at every level, are seeking to make a name for themselves, and the best way to do that is by prosecuting some high-level person. While companies that are indicted almost always settle, individual defendants whose careers are at stake will often go to trial. And if the government wins such a trial, as it usually does, the prosecutor’s reputation is made. My point is that whatever small influence the “revolving door” may have in discouraging certain white-collar prosecutions is more than offset, at least in the case of prosecuting high-level individuals, by the career-making benefits such prosecutions confer on the successful prosecutor.

So, one asks again, why haven’t we seen such prosecutions growing out of the financial crisis? I offer, by way of speculation, three influences that I think, along with others, have had the effect of limiting such prosecutions.

First, the prosecutors had other priorities. Some of these were completely understandable. For example, before 2001, the FBI had more than one thousand agents assigned to investigating financial frauds, but after September 11 many of these agents were shifted to antiterrorism work. Who can argue with that? Yet the result was that, by 2007 or so, there were only 120 agents reviewing the more than 50,000 reports of mortgage fraud filed by the banks. It is true that after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, new agents were hired for some of the vacated spots in offices concerned with fraud detection; but this is not a form of detection easily learned, and recent budget limitations have only exacerbated the problem.

Of course, while the FBI has substantial responsibility for investigating mortgage fraud, the FBI is not the primary investigator of fraud in the sale of mortgage-backed securities; that responsibility lies mostly with the SEC. But at the very time the financial crisis was breaking, the SEC was trying to deflect criticism from its failure to detect the Madoff fraud, and this led it to concentrate on other Ponzi-like schemes that emerged in the wake of the financial crisis, along with cases involving misallocation of assets (such as stealing funds from a customer), which are among the easiest cases to prove. Indeed, as Professor John Coffee of Columbia Law School has repeatedly documented, Ponzi schemes and misallocation-of-asset cases have been the primary focus of the SEC since 2009, while cases involving fraud in the sale of mortgage-backed securities have been much less frequent. More recently, moreover, the SEC has been hard hit by budget limitations, and this has not only made it more difficult to assign the kind of manpower the kinds of frauds we are talking about require, but also has led the SEC enforcement staff to focus on the smaller, easily resolved cases that will beef up their statistics when they go to Congress begging for money.

As for the Department of Justice proper, a decision was made in 2009 to spread the investigation of financial fraud cases among numerous US Attorney’s Offices, many of which had little or no previous experience in investigating and prosecuting sophisticated financial frauds. This was in connection with the president’s creation of a special task force to investigate the crisis, from which remarkably little has been heard in the intervening four-plus years. At the same time, the US Attorney’s Office with the greatest expertise in these kinds of cases, the Southern District of New York, was just embarking on its prosecution of insider-trading cases arising from the Raj Rajaratnam tapes, which soon proved a gold mine of prosecutable cases that absorbed a huge amount of the attention of the securities fraud unit of that office.

While I want to stress again that I have no inside information, as a former chief of that unit I would venture to guess that the cases involving the financial crisis were parceled out to assistant US attorneys who were also responsible for insider-trading cases. Which do you think an assistant would devote most of her attention to: an insider-trading case that was already nearly ready to go to indictment and that might lead to a high-visibility trial, or a financial crisis case that was just getting started, would take years to complete, and had no guarantee of even leading to an indictment? Of course, she would put her energy into the insider-trading case, and if she was lucky, it would go to trial, she would win, and, in some cases, she would then take a job with a large law firm. And in the process, the financial fraud case would get lost in the shuffle.

In short, a focus on quite different priorities is, I submit, one of the reasons the financial fraud cases have not been brought, especially cases against high-level individuals that would take many years, many investigators, and a great deal of expertise to investigate. But a second, and less salutary, reason for not bringing such cases is the government’s own involvement in the underlying circumstances that led to the financial crisis.

On the one hand, the government, writ large, had a part in creating the conditions that encouraged the approval of dubious mortgages. Even before the start of the housing boom, it was the government, in the form of Congress, that repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, thus allowing certain banks that had previously viewed mortgages as a source of interest income to become instead deeply involved in securitizing pools of mortgages in order to obtain the much greater profits available from trading. It was the government, in the form of both the executive and the legislature, that encouraged deregulation, thus weakening the power and oversight not only of the SEC but also of such diverse banking overseers as the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, both in the Treasury Department. It was the government, in the form of the Federal Reserve, that kept interest rates low, in part to encourage mortgages. It was the government, in the form of the executive, that strongly encouraged banks to make loans to individuals with low incomes who might have previously been regarded as too risky to warrant a mortgage.

Thus, in the year 2000, HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo increased to 50 percent the percentage of low-income mortgages that the government-sponsored entities known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were required to purchase, helping to create the conditions that resulted in over half of all mortgages being subprime at the time the housing market began to collapse in 2007.

It was the government, pretty much across the board, that acquiesced in the ever-greater tendency not to require meaningful documentation as a condition of obtaining a mortgage, often preempting in this regard state regulations designed to assure greater mortgage quality and a borrower’s ability to repay. Indeed, in the year 2000, the Office of Thrift Supervision, having just finished a successful campaign to preempt state regulation of thrift underwriting, terminated its own underwriting regulations entirely.

The result of all this was the mortgages that later became known as “liars’ loans.” They were increasingly risky; but what did the banks care, since they were making their money from the securitizations. And what did the government care, since it was helping to create a boom in the economy and helping voters to realize their dream of owning a home?

Moreover, the government was also deeply enmeshed in the aftermath of the financial crisis. It was the government that proposed the shotgun marriages of, among others, Bank of America with Merrill Lynch, and of J.P. Morgan with Bear Stearns. If, in the process, mistakes were made and liabilities not disclosed, was it not partly the government’s fault? One does not necessarily have to adopt the view of Neil Barofsky, former special inspector general in charge of oversight of TARP, that regulators made almost no effort to hold accountable the financial institutions they were bailing out, to wonder whether the government, having helped create the conditions that led to the seeming widespread fraud in the mortgage-backed securities market, was all too ready to forgive its alleged perpetrators.

Please do not misunderstand me. I am not suggesting that the government knowingly participated in any of the fraudulent practices alleged by the Financial Inquiry Crisis Commission and others. But what I am suggesting is that the government was deeply involved, from beginning to end, in helping create the conditions that could lead to such fraud, and that this would give a prudent prosecutor pause in deciding whether to indict a CEO who might, with some justice, claim that he was only doing what he fairly believed the government wanted him to do.

The final factor I would mention is both the most subtle and the most systemic of the three, and arguably the most important. It is the shift that has occurred, over the past thirty years or more, from focusing on prosecuting high-level individuals to focusing on prosecuting companies and other institutions. It is true that prosecutors have brought criminal charges against companies for well over a hundred years, but until relatively recently, such prosecutions were the exception, and prosecutions of companies without simultaneous prosecutions of their managerial agents were even rarer.

The reasons were obvious. Companies do not commit crimes; only their agents do. And while a company might get the benefit of some such crimes, prosecuting the company would inevitably punish, directly or indirectly, the many employees and shareholders who were totally innocent. Moreover, under the law of most US jurisdictions, a company cannot be criminally liable unless at least one managerial agent has committed the crime in question; so why not prosecute the agent who actually committed the crime?

In recent decades, however, prosecutors have been increasingly attracted to prosecuting companies, often even without indicting a single person. This shift has often been rationalized as part of an attempt to transform “corporate cultures,” so as to prevent future such crimes; and as a result, government policy has taken the form of “deferred prosecution agreements” or even “nonprosecution agreements,” in which the company, under threat of criminal prosecution, agrees to take various prophylactic measures to prevent future wrongdoing. Such agreements have become, in the words of Lanny Breuer, the former head of the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, “a mainstay of white-collar criminal law enforcement,” with the department entering into 233 such agreements over the last decade. But in practice, I suggest, this approach has led to some lax and dubious behavior on the part of prosecutors, with deleterious results.

If you are a prosecutor attempting to discover the individuals responsible for an apparent financial fraud, you go about your business in much the same way you go after mobsters or drug kingpins: you start at the bottom and, over many months or years, slowly work your way up. Specifically, you start by “flipping” some lower- or mid-level participant in the fraud who you can show was directly responsible for making one or more false material misrepresentations but who is willing to cooperate, and maybe even “wear a wire”—i.e., secretly record his colleagues—in order to reduce his sentence. With his help, and aided by the substantial prison penalties now available in white-collar cases, you go up the ladder.

But if your priority is prosecuting the company, a different scenario takes place. Early in the investigation, you invite in counsel to the company and explain to him or her why you suspect fraud. He or she responds by assuring you that the company wants to cooperate and do the right thing, and to that end the company has hired a former assistant US attorney, now a partner at a respected law firm, to do an internal investigation. The company’s counsel asks you to defer your investigation until the company’s own internal investigation is completed, on the condition that the company will share its results with you. In order to save time and resources, you agree.

Six months later the company’s counsel returns, with a detailed report showing that mistakes were made but that the company is now intent on correcting them. You and the company then agree that the company will enter into a deferred prosecution agreement that couples some immediate fines with the imposition of expensive but internal prophylactic measures. For all practical purposes the case is now over. You are happy because you believe that you have helped prevent future crimes; the company is happy because it has avoided a devastating indictment; and perhaps the happiest of all are the executives, or former executives, who actually committed the underlying misconduct, for they are left untouched.

I suggest that this is not the best way to proceed. Although it is supposedly justified because it prevents future crimes, I suggest that the future deterrent value of successfully prosecuting individuals far outweighs the prophylactic benefits of imposing internal compliance measures that are often little more than window-dressing. Just going after the company is also both technically and morally suspect. It is technically suspect because, under the law, you should not indict or threaten to indict a company unless you can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that some managerial agent of the company committed the alleged crime; and if you can prove that, why not indict the manager? And from a moral standpoint, punishing a company and its many innocent employees and shareholders for the crimes committed by some unprosecuted individuals seems contrary to elementary notions of moral responsibility.

These criticisms take on special relevance, however, in the instance of investigations growing out of the financial crisis, because, as noted, the Department of Justice’s position, until at least recently, is that going after the suspect institutions poses too great a risk to the nation’s economic recovery. So you don’t go after the companies, at least not criminally, because they are too big to jail; and you don’t go after the individuals, because that would involve the kind of years-long investigations that you no longer have the experience or the resources to pursue.

In conclusion, I want to stress again that I do not claim that the financial crisis that is still causing so many of us so much pain and despondency was the product, in whole or in part, of fraudulent misconduct. But if it was—as various governmental authorities have asserted it was—then the failure of the government to bring to justice those responsible for such colossal fraud bespeaks weaknesses in our prosecutorial system that need to be addressed.

Oropani državljani

Kakšna je naša zgodba,  prava, nova, drugačna, še ne videna, izvirna, ki ustreza sedanjem trenutku? Tako v Sloveniji kot v svetu. Morda je ključno koga zgodba naslavlja. Kdo smo, kje smo bili in kam gremo? In kaj hočemo? Pravzaprav ne naslavlja nikogar, ampak se v zgodbi naslavljamo med sabo. Enaki enake. Nočemo več biti nagovarjani kot  amorfno ljudstvo, niti kot revolucionarni razred ali sloj. Ne zato, ker bi se hoteli od te preteklosti distancirati. Ne zato ker bi se hoteli predstavljati kot “meščanje”, kot nekaj več od delavskega razreda, od domnevno “nižjih” razredov”, od ljudstva. Nasprotno, vidimo se kot dediči vseh emancipajskih gibanj v zgodovini, delavskih, ženskih, antikolonialističnih in še posebej antifašističnih gibanj. Slednja so svojo zmago plačala gigantskimi žrtvami. Kljub temu  naslavljanje z ljudstvom in delavskim razredom ne zveni pristno. Tega se še posebej zavedamo tisti, ki smo živeli v času socialističnih sistemov.  Tako naslavljanje podrazumeva socialne hirearhije preteklosti, tako tiste meščanske kot one proletarske. Meščanske so bile vsaj pri nas do nedavna presežene.  Na novo-meščane  danes gledamo kot na bedno obujanje politično kompromitiranega mrtveca, kot zgodovinsko farso nostalgikov, filistrov, ki si želijo brez zaslug ali razlogov biti nad drugimi ljudmi. Nazorno kažejo, da je vsa njihova ideologija pridobitništvo.  Pridobotništvo zlepa ali zgrda, zakonito ali mafijsko. Gre za najbolj prezira vredne primerke človeštva. Iz njih so v preteklosti zrasli fašizmi in nacizmi.Njihovo današnje  spogledavnje s fašistoidnostjo nas spominja na to. Vendar sta problematična tudi “ljudstvo” in “razred” socialistične in komunistične provinienece. Vsebujeta hierarhično gledanje, na eni strani pravoverne in zveste avantgarde in drugi strani ljudstvo.  Spominjata nas na živalsko farmo nedavne preteklosti. Pokroviteljsko gledanje “von oben”, ki so ga zakrivili že komunistični teoretiki, pogosto meščanski sinovi svojega časa in svojega razreda.  Družbo so najpogosteje razumeli kot svojevrsten heglovski stroj. Sebe seveda kot strojevodje. Deli stroja so zgolj sredstva, zgolj nekaj s čimer uporavljaš s propagando in represivnim apartom države.    “Ljudstva”, “množice”, “mase”, so na razpolago  za vodenje in manipuliranje. S podžiganjem nizkih strasti so na razpolago za mobilizacijo  za izključevanja notranjih in zunanjih sovražnikov.  Naš zgodba naslavlja odgovornega in kompetentnega so-državljana, enega izmed nas, ki želi ostati avtonomni posameznik, tudi ko deluje v skupini. Dve spremembi sta ustvarili tega državljana. Prvič dvestoletno krhanje (pruske, vojaške) avtoritarne kulture, ki je zrasla na fevdalizmu, in drugič kulturna emancipacija, s vse višjo splošno izobrazbo. Niti trgi niti današnje politične elite teh dejstev ne priznavajo. Vztrajno iščejo najnižje skupne imenovalce in obravnavajo “ljudstvo” in “množico” glede na njihove najbolj primitivne člane, ki predstavljajo najnižjo kulturno raven in razgledanost. “Ljudstvo”, “narod”, “folk”, “množica”, kot “molzna krava”, “kanon futer” in “konzumenti” . Zato so ljudstvo, množica in ulica prezirani. Zato nam lahko zdravnik na UKC, ujet z roko v marmeladi, grozi. Če bi vedel, s kom ima opravka, bi se potuhnil. Zato lahko grozi Hillary Clinton, ko so ZDA ujete z roko v prisluškovalni marmeladi. In mi se počutimo užaljene. Krnjeno je naše dostajanstvo. Ko odkrijemo, da nam množično prisluškujejo in nam hkrati pridigajo o svobodi in demokraciji. Ko nas obtožujejo, da živimo na preveliki nogi in nas hkrati ropajo. Pred nosom nam spravljajo milijone v zaseben žepe in zahtevajo, da mi napolnimo nastale luknje. Ponižani se sprašujemo, za koga le nas imajo! In volimo vsakič druge. In vedno enake! Položaj je paradoksen: medtem ko še nikoli ni bilo tako emancipiranega državljana, tudi nikoli ni bilo tako arogantnih oblastnikov, ki zgolj na videz vzdržujeo neko politično pluralnost. Če se jih je v preteklosti ujelo pri kraji so se potuhnili. Če se jih je ujelo pri špioniranju je izbruhnil škandal in so odstopili. Njihova današnja aroganca je posledica strahu, ki izvira iz slutnje, da jim je odklenkalo. Njihova oholost samo še bolj žali avtonomnega državljana in približuje konec njihove vladavine. Slutijo, da se tega ne da ustaviti.   Nič drugače ni bilo  pred francosko revolucijo. Le da so danes priviligirana in parazitska dvorna kamarila bankirji. J.P. Morgani in Kramarji. Prav zato so domnevni piškoti Marie Antnoinette lahko sprožili revolucijo. Drugi paradoks je  Evropska unija, ki  je državljana do konca  oropala dejanske demokracije in odločanja. O bistvenih zakonih ne odločajo več njegovi predstavniki v parlamentu, ampak se jih izmišlja anonimna birokracija v Bruslju. V imenu Evropskega sveta, to je sveta vseh korumpiranih vlad Evrope. V resnici  EU odloča v imenu mednarodnega kapitala.  Tako nam življenje ne krojijo več zakoni ampak arbitrarna pravila imenovana direktive. O vsem ostalem odloča  domnevno svobodni trg. Najbolj kompetentni in ozaveščeni državljani v zgodovini človeštva v utopično razvitih informacijskih okoljih,  so danes oropani vsake politične moči. Kar je ostalo od politike so nesmiselni in prazni politični volilni spektakli in medijski resničnostni šovi. Perverznost te situacije je toliko večja, ker nam kot samoumevno vsiljujejo ideologijo, po kateri nismo bili še nikoli tako bogati in svobodni kot smo danes. Medtem državljani, usposobljeni za doslej največjo možno avtonomnost in emancipacijo še naprej drsimo v  bedo in nemoč.
Igor Koršič

 

Ne rabimo takih politikov!

Voditelji političnih strank se odrekajo vsake odgovornosti za krizo in s prstom kažejo na koga? Na nižje uradnike! Včerajšnja Tarča je ponovno razgalila vso neskončno bedo naših političnih elit. Drug za drugim so predsedniki strank  brez najmanjše  zadrege zanikali svojo krivdo in odgovornost za bančno krizo in stanje v državi nasploh. Niso  krivi njihovi  ministri, njihove vlade, njihovi poslanci, njihovo ukrepanje in neukrepanje. Ne, če tega še niste vedeli, krivi so bili kreditni odbori na bankah. Te “lopove” je treba menda brez milosti preganjati.  in morda še nekdanjega guvernerja Banke Slovenije Kranjca. Za znanega filozofa SDS so bili krivci seveda oni iz ozadja. Ali smo še sposobni razumeti, da nas imajo ti ljudje za popolne norce?  Da svojo odločilno vlogo v sistemski korupciji prikrivajo s trikom “Primite tatu!” Če nismo popolnoma neprištevni in če imamo še kanček človeškega in državljanskega dostojanstva, potem jim tega peskovniškega obnašanja, te bedne predstave ne smemo dovoliti! Celo Slavko Bobovnik, ki mu novinarska vloga nalaga nevtralnost,  je upravičeno izgubljal živce in spraševal, čemu zaboga jih potem volimo. Čemu služijo ti nekompetentni glumači? Prav oni so paravan za ropanje države in državljanov, prav oni igrajo osrednjo vlogo v sitemski korupciji. Prav njihove stranke dajejo alibi roparjem, ki se pojavljajo v preobleki ministrov in sekretarjev, ki nastavljajo Kramarje in nadzorne svete, ki sami nastavljajo kreditne odbore in druge ki urejajo odtekanje našega denarja v žepe posmameznikov, njihovih klientov. Kljub povečani aktivnosti policije in tožilcev ropanje poteka še naprej v slejkoprej nezmanjšanem obsegu. Trenutne racije služijo tudi zavajanju, da se kljub vsemu nekaj premika. To je pljunek v morje. Ustanovili niso nobenih novih teles za preganjanje sistemske korupcije. Nič niso okrepili obstoječih organov.  Kako bi jih le, saj  predstavljajo vrh korupcijskega klopčiča prav oni sami.  Kar potrjuje primer Kramar, za katerega malo manjka, da bo postal žrtev vladne samovolje.  Ni problem Kramar, niso problem ti pajaci, ki se delajo da so politiki. Problem smo mi, ki vse to še naprej dopuščamo. In z davki plačujemo na stotine Kramarjev.  Ne dajmo se zavajati domnevni potrebi po politični stabilnosti. Politično stabilnosti ne potrebujejo za ureditev razmer,  potrebujejo  jo za dokončanje svoje rabote. Ko bo rop končan, ko bomo državljani in država obubožani in naprodaj mednarodnemu kapitalu, bo njihova njihova misija končana. Potem se bodo prelevili v nedolžne in nemočne upokojence.

Pika na i o tem kaj je za naše politike odgovornost za korupcija: Nekdanji minister za zdravstvo Gantar je na vprašanje, če se čuti odgovornega za korupcijo ki jo odkrivata policija in tožilstvo, odgovoril da ne, češ, to bi bilo tako kot če bi ministra za promet krivili za prometne nesreče. Vpraševala je Rozvita Pesek v Odmevih.

Igor Koršič

Samopohabljanje države

PREŽIVETVENE STRATEGIJE SVOBODNJAKOV

O samozaposlenih v kulturi je bilo v samostojni Sloveniji že veliko napisanega, še več pa povedanega. Problematika je kulminirala pred petnajstimi leti, nekaj let po 1994, ko so bili t.i. svobodnjaki kategorizirani kot delodajalci in ne več delavci. Ugotovljeno je bilo, da Slovenija izgublja ključni kreativni potencial, kar je posledica slabega in diskriminatornega socialnega položaja samozaposlenih v kulturi. Takšen položaj ne omogoča normalne regeneracije delovnih in ustvarjalnih sposobnosti svobodnjakov, onemogoča sledenje stroki, odriva ustvarjalce na socialni rob in spodbuja socialni dumping.

Ker pa so človeku lastne sposobnosti preživetja, so se svobodnjaki tako ali drugače znašli tudi v tem položaju, to je med zaposlenimi, ki lahko svoje sposobnosti v celoti usmerijo v delo in cenenim študentskim delom. V prvi vrsti se je boj za preživetje na trgu dela pokazal v socialnem dumpingu, kar pomeni, da so se svobodnjaki odpovedali lastni socialni varnosti, oziroma so pristali za nižanje le-te, pozabili, da jih na stara leta čaka minimalna pokojnina in postali skrajno fleksibilni. Potem so, spričo povzročenega kanibalizma, izsilili takšne in drugačne izjeme, davčne olajšave in subvencionirane prispevke za socialno varnost.

Po dolgoletnih prizadevanjih sindikalne konference SUKI, ki deluje pri Sindikatu kulture in narave Slovenije GLOSA, je bila leta 2009 pri Ministrstvu za kulturo končno ustanovljena delovna skupina za celostno obravnavo problematike samozaposlenih v kulturi. Vanjo so bili delegirani predstavniki civilne družbe kot zastopniki samozaposlenih. Pri tem velja omeniti, da delujejo pri Evropski komisiji odbori za socialni dialog za različna področja že dlje časa. Vanje so vključeni tudi predstavniki samozaposlenih na delojemalski strani, saj so vključeni v sindikate in imajo kolektivne pogodbe. Kot primer si velja ogledati dokumente za avdiovizualni sektor. Pomenljiva je tudi Primerjalnopravna analiza ureditve statusa in socialne varnosti samozaposlenih oseb v kulturi v nekaterih evropskih državah, ki jo je po naročilu Ministrstva za kulturo pripravil Inštitut za primerjalno pravo pri Pravni fakulteti v Ljubljani. Iz nje je mogoče razbrati, da samozaposleni v kulturi niso nikjer v obravnavanih državah uvrščeni v kategorijo delodajalcev. Še več, ponekod se morajo posebej registrirati kot delodajalci, če želijo koga zaposliti. Žal pa se je analiza izognila kolektivnih pogodb, ki pokrivajo samozaposlene in njihovo vpetost v socialni dialog.

Medtem pa so pri nas bili svobodnjaki prisiljeni v še eno preživetveno strategijo. Tisti, bolj podjetni in iznajdljivi, so namreč pričeli ustanavljati nevladne organizacije, zavode in druge oblike organizacij, preko katerih so lažje kandidirali za sredstva za izvajanje svojega programa. Vendar so sedaj sami pričeli najemati druge svobodnjake. Tako smo prišli do neke vrste dvoživk, ki so po eni strani samozaposleni, po drugi pa ustanovitelji, lastniki ali direktorji organizacij in kot taki naročniki ali delodajalci svobodnjakom. Znašli so se v položaju, ko morajo z omejenimi sredstvi realizirati svoje programe, vizije in ambicije. In prav tako kot povsod drugje, bodisi v javnem ali zasebnem sektorju, gradbeništvu ali gostinstvu, je najlažje prihraniti na račun brezpravnega posameznika, ki pristane na vse, da le ima delo (ne službe), da zasluži za golo preživetje in vsaj minimalno socialno vključenost. Zato postajamo Slovenci kot narod čedalje bolj pohabljeni, saj smo najbolj uspešno načeli tisto vezno tkivo naroda, ki se mu reče kultura.

Za ilustracijo še nekaj številk:

  • povprečna letna bruto plača v javnem sektorju za leto 2012 je bila 21.444 € (izobrazbena struktura samozaposlenih v kulturi je primerljiva z javnim sektorjem),

  • povprečni letni bruto prihodek samozaposlenega v kulturi za leto 2012 je bil 12.513 €,

  • skoraj 90 % samozaposlenih v kulturi je zaslužilo manj kot letno plačo zaposlenega v javnem sektorju,

  • 45,5 % samozaposlenih v kulturi je zaslužilo manj kot 10.000 € letno,

  • 65,5 % samozaposlenih v kulturi je zaslužilo manj kot povprečje samozaposlenih.

Če bi pogledali neto primerjavo bi bila slika še nekoliko slabša, saj nosi samozaposleni vse stroške, ki jih sicer nosi delodajalec (prevoz na delo, prehrana, bolniške, poslovna infrastruktura, izobraževanje, literatura ipd).

Zato je delovna skupina za samozaposlene oblikovala cilje in usmeritve za pripravo nove zakonodaje na področju kulture tako, da upošteva, da samozaposleni v kulturi ne zaposlujejo nikogar, torej jih ni mogoče šteti za delodajalce. Samozaposleni v kulturi nastopajo tako na trgu dela kot na trgu storitev, kar mora zakonodaja prepoznati. Zaradi potrebe po pretoku ustvarjalnega potenciala v celotnem slovenskem kulturnem prostoru, dostopnosti kulturnih vsebin, ekonomike kulturne produkcije in učinkov kulturnih produktov, je delovna skupina predlagala Ministrstvu za kulturo, da mora nova zakonodaja tistim samozaposlenim, ki nastopajo na trgu dela:

– zagotoviti človekove in delavske pravice,

– preprečiti vsako diskriminacijo in nelojalno konkurenco,

– zagotoviti primerljivi socialni in gmotni položaj s primerljivimi zaposlenimi po pogodbah o zaposlitvi v javnem sektorju upoštevajoč stroške samozaposlitve,

– v primeru zaposlitve (zlasti v javnem sektorju) zagotoviti priznanje delovne dobe, delovnih izkušenj, dosežkov, nagrad in priznanj ter tudi neformalno pridobljenega znanja,

– zagotoviti ustrezno nadomestilo prihodka v primeru bolniške nezmožnosti za delo od prvega dne take nezmožnosti,

– zagotoviti ustrezno nadomestilo prihodka v obdobjih brezposelnosti brez izgube statusa,

– zagotoviti ustrezna obdobja počitka med delom in na letni ravni za regeneracijo delovnih sposobnosti,

– zagotoviti ustrezno obravnavo osebnega dohodka,

– zagotoviti pravico samozaposlenih do urejanja vprašanj njihovega socialnega položaja s socialnim dialogom,

– zagotoviti pravno varstvo samozaposlenega v primeru kršitev in ugotovitev elementov delovnega razmerja.

Pri tem je potrebno upoštevati, da samozaposleni nastopa na trgu dela takrat ko:

– so delo ali izidi dela sestavni del delovnega procesa ali izida proizvodnega procesa ali osnovne dejavnosti uporabnika,

– se delo opravlja za plačilo v razmerju do organizacije ali uporabnika, ki izide dela vključuje v izdelek ali storitev, katero prodaja na trgu ali končnemu uporabniku, samozaposleni izvajalec pa nima neposrednega vpliva na oblikovanje tržne cene izdelka oziroma storitve.

– Predlagane smernice se smiselno uporabijo tudi za samostojne novinarje.

Predlagani cilji in usmeritve naj bi postopoma pripeljali do tega, da bi ustvarjalci v kulturi soodločali o svoji usodi in si s svojim delom zagotavljali človeka vredno življenje, ne da bi jim bilo potrebno prositi miloščine politikov (to je drobtinice iz davkoplačevalskega kolača). Z ustreznim in poštenim plačilom za svoje delo bodo tudi svobodnjaki lahko plačevali davke in prispevke, tako kot tisti, bolj srečni zaposleni državljani ter se tako izvili iz diskriminatornega in ponižujočega položaja.

Nevarnosti pri vpeljavi predlaganih ciljev in ukrepov pa se skrivajo v birokratski togosti in ozkoglednosti, v strahu pred spremembami znane prakse in pred neznano prihodnostjo ter v nezmožnosti razumevanja postopkov in predvidevanja posledic. Previdnost velja tudi pri morebitnem konfliktu interesov  tistih samozaposlenih, ki jih bolj kot pošteno plačilo za delo kolegov, skrbi strošek nevladnih in drugih organizacij, ki ne morejo zagotoviti ustreznih virov za svoje delovanje. Sicer pa je v namen razreševanja te problematike Ministrstvo za kulturo ustanovilo Delovno skupino za NVO.

Zavedati se je treba, da predstavlja ustrezna zakonodaja le orodje za dosego ciljev, ki si jih bodo morali samozaposleni izboriti v praksi. Vedeti morajo, da ne bo nihče drug storil tega namesto njih.

Ljubljana, 12. december 2013

Denis Miklavčič, predsednik DS