So it turns out Christine Lagarde, the IMF chief leading the austerity campaign against Greek working people (targeting pensions in particular), doesn’t pay taxes on her annual salary of $467,940 (£298,675) plus $83,760 additional allowance a year. Her benefits include rent subsidies, dependency allowances for spouses & children, education grants for school-age children, travel & shipping expenses, subsidized medical insurance, pay raises every July 1st. There’s no info on the salary & benefits of Angela Merkel, the EU agent of destruction in Greece, but her net worth is nearly $12 million.

Shocking indeed, but the modus operandi also of multinational corporations, the agencies of neoliberal plunder. At least 26 Fortune 500 corporations in the US pay no income taxes, including General Electric, General Motors (bailed out by US taxpayers), Boeing, ConEdison, Merck the pharmaceutical giant, Verizon, PG&E, Newmont Mining (involved in controversial copper & gold mines in Peru involving human rights abuses & environmental destruction).

Merkel & Lagarde are only two representatives of international capital putting the screws on working people–& not just in Greece. They’re not exactly what the women’s movement had in mind when it fought for female liberation. But they’re certainly proof positive that treachery is not a gender-based phenomenon.

(Caricature from caricaturecrichard blog spot)