updated etc.

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Daniella Gabor

kind of incredible, but US Fed's emergency lending to US banks was higher over the past week than during the global financial crisis/Lehman moment in 2008

Violent protests in France over Macron’s retirement age push 

PARIS (AP) — Angry protesters took to the streets in Paris and other cities for a second day on Friday, trying to pressure lawmakers to bring down French President Emmanuel Macron’s government and doom the unpopular retirement age increase he’s trying to impose without a vote in the National Assembly.

A day after Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne invoked a special constitutional power to skirt a vote in the chaotic lower chamber, lawmakers on the right and left filed no-confidence motions to be voted on Monday.

At the elegant Place de Concorde, a festive protest by several thousand, with chants, dancing and a huge bonfire, degenerated into a scene echoing the night before. Riot police charged and threw tear gas to empty the huge square across from the National Assembly after troublemakers climbed scaffolding on a renovation site, arming themselves with wood. They lobbed fireworks and paving stones at police in a standoff.

Exclusive: EU concerned by Ukraine’s controversial labour reforms

Experts say the government is taking advantage of the war to pass otherwise difficult legislation dating from 2020 and 2021. The country is currently under martial law, meaning protest is forbidden.

Other measures passed by the Ukrainian government in the past year include the introduction of zero-hours contracts and a wartime suspension of collective agreements between employers and trade unions.

Parliament has also passed powers permitting the state to confiscate trade union property – despite the fact that the ILO is overseeing two complaints over disputed union property....

Ukrainian social policy analyst Natalia Lomonosova previously told openDemocracy that she feared that the government’s radical wartime socio-economic policy could exacerbate the vulnerable situation of millions of Ukrainians displaced by Russia’s war.

The anonymous European diplomat’s summary was stark: “We are witnessing the breakdown of the social state in Ukraine.

“Everything apart from the military is now outsourced internationally. Social affairs are more and more outsourced to international donors – which is why international donors should pay more attention to this,” they added.

“​​The Washington Consensus has never been more alive than in Ukraine. It is Ukrainian-initiated, but in the West we accepted it,” the European official said, referring to the policy of pushing developing states to move away from state regulation and towards the free market. “And for Ukraine, this is a way to get closer to the West, and to fight the local oligarchs.”

The EU told openDemocracy it would “follow up as appropriate to ensure that commitments under [Ukraine’s] association agreement are properly upheld.”

“​​The Washington Consensus has never been more alive than in Ukraine. It is Ukrainian-initiated,..."

I'm bored