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Tavares, Miguel Sousa
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4 articles of this author have been cited in the European Press Review so far.
Portugal's crisis hits only consumers
The discount campaign staged by Portugal's largest supermarket chain on May 1 has triggered a fierce debate about price politics in the food sector. Retailers certainly didn't do their customers any favours with this strategy, the left-liberal weekly Expresso concludes: "Did they lose or make money with this campaign? If they lost money this means that they were guilty of price dumping and that their profit margins are so large that they can afford to lose money voluntarily. … And if they feel so socially obliged to their penny-pinching customers why don't they give a 10 percent discount for the next six months to a year rather than launching a one-off 50 percent promotion that turned us into a fourth-world country for a day?"
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More from the press review on the subject » Trade, » Consumers, » Society, » Portugal
Portugal not emerging from the crisis
Portugal's international creditors once more gave the measures carried out so far to improve the country's ailing public finances the thumbs-up in a report published in early April. But this praise for the government's austerity programme should not divert attention from the country's huge problems, the left-liberal weekly Expresso points out: "It's not enough to set a common goal of rebalancing public finances. We need to know at what pace, and above all at what cost. … The execution of the 2011 and 2012 budget plan shows that the country definitely won't be able to finance itself in 2013. … Our finance minister has assured us that Portugal is on the right path. Yes, it's true: 1,500 more unemployed each day and dozens of bankruptcies, plunging tax revenues, the blind scrapping of valuable projects and the return to a Portugal of emigration. The only one who believes Portugal is on the right path is the government."
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More from the press review on the subject » Fiscal Policy, » Financial Markets, » Portugal
Miguel Sousa Tavares on capatilist con artists
For the journalist and author Migual Sousa Tavares, capitalists and governments are to blame for the current financial crisis: "Who will pay for this? The taxpayers, and by that I mean those who work even though their salaries have not been paid, while top managers at the bankrupt Lehman Brothers receive millions for 'good management' or as a golden parachute after having pushed the company into a nose dive. For years the 'liberals' have been telling us how businesses ... must have unrestricted growth to reach a strategic size in the global economy. Governments did all they could to make this possible: mergers and takeovers were approved and facilitated, even if in this way competition - one of the pillars of the free market economy - was endangered and thousands of jobs jeopardised, as we are seeing now with the toppling of the American International Group. ... Marx said long ago that capitalism will devour itself if it is left to its own devices. What was lacking in this case? Morals on the part of the capitalists and a sense of duty on the part of those in power. ... In the Wild West those caught swindling were stripped naked, tarred and feathered and driven out of town. Today they get millions of dollars in compensation and scandalously high pensions."
» full article (external link, Portuguese)
More from the press review on the subject » Financial Markets, » U.S., » Global
Heads of government at a loss
The state of the world is miserable and the European heads of state and government are at a loss over what to do about it, writes author Miguel Sousa Tavares in the weekly newspaper Expresso: "The price of crude oil is twice as high as it was a year ago; food prices ... have risen by 30 percent; the interest rate ... is higher than ever; ... unemployment is increasing and despite all that immigrants from Africa are intent on trying their luck in Europe, forcing Brussels to adopt inhuman directives. Iran is testing missiles ... and NATO is involved in an interminable war in Afghanistan. ... The giants of the East (India and China) are rapidly developing and the world's resources cannot keep pace. ... Thousands of hectares in the Amazon are being converted to soya crops, and fertile land in Africa is being used to grow monocultures for biofuels. The EU does not know what to do about Turkey, immigrants, the EU Reform Treaty, Ireland and Poland, or about an African continent where a criminal like Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe continues to be treated like a statesman. ... The sole foreign policy decision that the EU Commission has made was to acknowledge the independence of Kosovo - a move they will regret. ... This is the state of the world. ... And a couple of photos from the G8 summit was all that was needed to see that never before have such an incompetent group of leaders had to find solutions for so many serious problems."
» full article (external link, Portuguese)
More from the press review on the subject » International Relations, » Security Policy / Crises / War, » EU Policy, » EU Constitution, » Europe, » Global
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