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Amelie Lanier Homepage
the credits influence
on an enterprises prosperity: chance or burden
Introduction "consumer society": payment of interest and liquidation of debts, as a sign of poverty and a moment of further impoverishment for the private debtor Welcome! Here you find my publications of the last decades – articles and books, partial or as a whole. One of my favourite topics is the history – and present performance – of money, credit and banks, in sum, finance capital. For a while I intensely investigated the economic history of Austria in the 19th century, focusing on the credit system, banks, the stock exchange, securities, and the like. Since then the whole financial system has undergone very substancial alterations. The first was the enhancement of credit to the sphere of the working class. Though already usual in several, mostly Anglo-Saxon countries, in many other countries of Europe this was a new phenomenon. Laws on rent restrictions, real estate property and credit rating were changed and mortgage became easier accessible to people who until then had been considered too risky clients for the banks. The credit card as a means of payment started to become fashionable in Continental Europe after the fall of the Iron Curtain. These developments represented a complete novelty in the former socialist countries where credit was seen as an adequate means to fulfil the promised and desired rise in living standards that could not be achieved with miserable salaries. In the course of these developments some principles of the credit system are being upheld and defended tooth and nail, as: Debts have to be served! But another principle has gone astray: Debts mostly don’t have to be repaid any more. A perpetual debtor is a constant source of income to the creditor, he prefers to keep it like that. This way the debtors repay their debt 3 or 4 or more times and still remain debtors. The wealth of the creditor produces the impoverishment of the debtor, and vice versa. Apart from these unpleasant developments in the credit sector another focus of my theoretical reflections has been the transformation of former socialist countries. After all, those were economically rather stable states that more or less fed and clothed their population and supplied it with medical treatment and education. Many of those states have now been made the back yard of the western member states of the EU – "old" Europe – and serve as a market and a reservoir of cheap workforce, with consequences like depopulation and social disintegration. Another focus on this website is on imperialism – that is, the competition between world powers and their relation to the states within their sphere of influence. This includes wars, invasions, the support of puppet governments, regime change, commercial treaties and cyber war. It also monitors the decline of present empires and the rise of powers-to-be. Finally, what also can be found on this website, is the idealism prevalent in journalism and science: the desire to imply a prefabricated scheme on the analysis of reality, seeking to put all facts into boxes of concepts, in order to fortify a worldview that fits into the familiar system of democracy, human rights, freedom and the like. This approach is contrary to science as it should be: analysing facts, dividing the general from the accidental, searching for essential and thus coming to conclusions that satisfy the search for scientific understanding of reality. Nowadays we face a shift in the understanding, the concept of science: while real and worthy science can only analyse the facts, the actual reality, "science" has become the synonym of prophecy. Experts of all kinds predict the things to come, and they are highly valued – not only by investment funds, but everywhere. Of course nobody remembers them when their prophecies don’t come true. Some of my publications were on Nietzsche, on whom I wrote my thesis. And then I have a lot to tell about the countries I’ve been to, so have a look at those pages. This, at least, is in English, while most of my previously printed (or unpublished) articles are not. But Google Translator gives you access to the other articles or books of mine which are in German or Spanish.
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Conference on new fascism in Budapest
Books, published and unpublished articles (in German) Books and articles in Hungarian
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Enjoy yourself! |
Old Fascism – new Fascism
A conference attempting to analyze and criticize fascist thought Kossuth Klub, Budapest, June 3-4.
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Cartoon on the crisis (David Harvey’s lecture illustrated by RSA)