And we’ve all got entangled… well, never mind where!

So Friday the 13th it was indeed. The downgrading and all the outrage from Europe’s leaders and the on going joke called the European Commission. Of course, this outrage was quite misplaced since this time the rating Agencies are merely pointing out the obvious. How can you solve a debt crisis by shrinking economies, eh?

As Larry Elliott has pointed out yet again, the problem is one of Debt AS A PERCENT OF GDP! And if you have two sides of an equation you can’t simply ignore one of them! I mean the EU-Troika policy forced down our gullets has succeeded admirably in…? Well, in reducing GDP, which means that if debt remains at the same absolute level or even if it diminishes slightly, it will keep growing to a higher and higher percent of GDP.

One might be forgiven for thinking that you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realise that much! Now, Greece’s GDP has already shrunk by 15% and looks set to achieving a 25% reduction very soon, particularly since The Frau has told us that the only way to agree to any more funding is to squeeze Greece’s GDP even further down through an even greater dose of austerity.

As to all this moral outrage at the nasty little American ratings agencies out to get us noble Europeans, in his article Ha-Joon Chang points out that this time, they’re only calling it as it is. And besides, he tells us 80% of one of these terrible agencies is in fact owned by French interests. (Ha! So much for bad American conspiracy theories.)

The whole idea of the Public Sector Involvement was flawed at the outset (see Yanis Varoufakis excellent and quite simple explanation why). So it really is quite a moot point whether the stalled talks on the PSI for Greece’s debt get started again or not. Either way it’s not going to solve the problem. In fact, it will only make it even worse.

Perhaps all we should do is brace ourselves for the inevitable crash round the corner. And that goes for the whole of the European venture and not just Greece.

Perhaps failure of the wretched PSI talks (in conjunction with the mass downgradings of the Eurozone economies) may actually be a blessing in disguise (even if it is a very good disguise as Churchill famously put it when he lost the elections after the war.)

Since if that does happen perhaps The Frau might may just be induced in the nick of time to adjust her precious knickers!

In the utter nonchalance of the masters who have plenty and can’t even imagine what hunger might mean, the Troika of the IMF the EU Commission and the ECB, seem to have thought the best way to solve the Greek deficit/debt crisis would be to throw more and more taxes on the heads of the lazy, undeserving, useless, lazy Greeks.

When you are about to inflict pain on people it is always best to paint them as the scum of the earth. It assuages your conscience if nothing else. Classically like the rape victim who always ‘asked for it!’ now didn’t she?

Now, our own ‘governors’, terrified by the prospect of going bust have so far simply gone along with anything proposed by this Troika however outlandish, however absurd.

Such as the taxation ‘policy’ (well of course it isn’t a policy at all! Just cruel and inhuman punishment hitting those least responsible for the mess worse.)

After raising indirect taxes to high heaven, thereby pricing all heating fuel out of our ability to pay (and in one of our coldest winters, just like 1941), hurling an extortion tax on property on top of all other property taxes, to be drawn from every nook  and cranny that has electricity no matter how poor or small, the crowning moment is looming round the corner, with the brilliantly inventive new income taxation that has been imposed.

However, this has metamorphosed into something not remotely related to income tax at all. Your real income is not taken into account. Instead the state has decided that if you are alive, then automatically you are earning 5000 Euro a year, regardless of whether you may be unemployed, destitute or even dying of hunger. Now, if you happen to be living somewhere at all, even if only in several square meters of space, you are again assumed to be earning even more, determined by the size of the house you are living in, regardless of whether it is your own or rented.

So for a start, anyone alive who happens to be living in some kind of dwelling rather than in a box or on the street is automatically assumed to be earning something like 10000 Euro a year. More and more being added on to that if you happen to have an old jalopy you can’t afford petrol for.

As a result, at a time of rising unemployment, slashed incomes for those who still have them by way of salaries, wages and pensions, the Greek State has decided that since it has solved all our problems, we are now all earning so much more than ever before and shall be taxed on this vague assumption of theirs at high rates.

So here in Greece Income tax is no longer income tax at all, but merely a fiction hitting the worse off worst. I wonder what will happen when all these poor unsuspecting people start getting these exorbitant bills to pay tax on income they have had no way of earning?

Enough is enough! And they better think about it before all hell breaks loose. And hell to pay will not be confined to Greece alone.

We keep hearing of the “lost” generation referring to the young people unable to find work, caught up in the harsh recession and deprived of hope. And this not only here in Greece, but all over southern Europe and in Britain too. Large numbers of young qualified people are emigrating to the Americas (predominantly South America) and Australia.

This is both sad and lamentable, and when you consider that Europe’s is an aging population, it is positively disastrous that the young are having to abandon ship.

However, what does a “lost” generation mean? The previous generations of Yuppies and hedge fund managers and Greed is Good ethics are the ones who created this global catastrophe, for their personal gratification and not for any lofty ideals. Yet it has been inculcated into the young at Business Schools, in common culture, as a matter of course that, as was once famously put by an infamous Lady, that “There Is No Alternative!”

But there is an alternative. And I do believe that it is this so called “lost” generation that will find it and implement it. Greed is not good. The self is not more important than the whole and, yes, I’m sorry Maggie, but there IS such a thing as Society.

In fact, the lost generation was the previous one in my opinion. This new generation, I believe, will be the one that finds itself.

Mario Draghi, the new President of the European Central Bank, is often derided for trying to be more German than the Germans. Unfortunately he seems to be living up to this reputation. Not in terms of efficiency and toughness, however, but in terms of the current lack of any imagination or even intelligence in trying to deal with the Great European (not debt but idiocy) Crisis.

In all the frantic running around in circles Europe has been exhibiting under the iron boot of The Frau over the last two years, the ECB decided to make unlimited cheap loans available to European Banks. At first glance this was greeted with relief in that it was assumed that these cheap loans to the banks would lead to greater liquidity in the market.

It didn’t work that way though, did it? Because as usual the root problem is not only never tackled but not even mentioned. The banks are the problem. But you mustn’t say so out loud. So, inevitably this one back fired too. The European banks drew some 500 billion in cheap funds from the ECB only to… make loans available to businesses in Europe? Boost consumer demand? No! Nothing of that! Are you stupid or something?

If anything, the Bankers are not stupid (at least from their own selfish point of view). So what did they do? They went and deposited all this lovely money back at the ECB for safe keeping.

You can’t really blame them. They are merely responding to the policies (or blatant lack thereof) imposed by The Frau.

So this time the Fix has made Europe look a bit like the snake chasing its tail and then sucking it down till it swallows itself.

‘Like a circle in a spiral like a wheel within a wheel, never ending nor beginning like an ever spinning wheel…’  Noel Harrison made this song popular in the late sixties. I think the lyrics perfectly describe  the dynamics of how our supposed leadership here in Europe is trying to grapple with its, to a great extent, self perpetuated if not self made crisis. Enjoy the song. It’s quite beautiful.

The Greek Government is to be proposed for the Nobel Prize in Geometry because it has finally cracked the problem of how to square the circle. In the great tradition of Ancient Greek Geometry the modern greek government has lived up to its heritage by increasing the number of unemployed in the economy, slashing incomes of all those remaining in work, throwing the country in deep recession thereby creating the conditions for exorbitant increases in taxation both direct and indirect taxation.

Has anyone else ever been able to achieve such success tantamount to squaring the circle?

The current global banking crisis not only risks destroying Europe, and not just its currency, but also throwing the whole world into a vortex of dangerous disarray. Yet the solution is so simple, it makes you want to cry that all our global leaders are so enthralled to this corrupt, degenerate system that they refuse even to contemplate it.

Amar Bihde explains quite succinctly in his Op-Ed article in the New York Times what should be done, how easily it could be done and how this is in fact what was done in the 1930s keeping the world economy ticking and safe till the brilliant financial banksters took over abolishing all the regulations that had kept our world in relatively good order.

Countries are neither corporations nor families struggling to pay back a mortgage loan. Unfortunately the ‘deciders’ of the western world seem to be totally ignorant of this fact and continue to press on with policies based on precisely these false premises.

In his article in the NYT today Paul Krugman has again endeavored to point this simple fact out. I hope he meets with greater success.

It ought to be self evident that a country in great debt should not have stringent austerity imposed on it to reduce its deficit. And yet No! Dogmatic policies carry on as usual, for all the adverse ill effects they have already achieved.

Here in Greece we have been told flat out that after two years of stringent austerity, almost four years of growing recession, we are closer to bankruptcy than before. You’d expect that should tell ‘them’ something about the quality of the recession inducing policies they have been imposing. But no. The medicine being prescribed, nay, being force fed down our gullets rather, is MORE even WORSE of the same recession exacerbating policies to, and I quote, ‘plug the hole’ of the growing deficit.

Every new tax imposed leads to a reduction in revenue, however, rather than the reverse. As people who used to study economics some thirty odd years ago know very well is what happens. But no, Dogma insists that this is the right way to go.

So how can we help wringing our hands in utter despair and contemplating suicide when the choice is between going bankrupt through a default on outstanding debt, or going bankrupt through galloping recession and over taxation. Not much to chose from there.

But Krugman is right (yet again, like Keynes) but this time not through explaining how the economy actually works, but because he tells us that we can go blue in the face trying to knock it into the ‘deciders’ thick well fed heads that this is not the way to go, but without ever achieving our purpose because we live in a global era of ‘post modern fact free politics’!

It goes without saying that The Frau is the very epitome of the mentality driving this outlandish, nightmare ‘post modern’ world.

In the midst of all these Maya and Hindu and whatever else prophecies of doom and gloom, added to the vicious circle of austerity – recession – more austerity – greater recession in which we have been wontonly thrown, I would like to wish you all a very Happy and Productive New Year.

And to ask you: Have you all made your New year’s Resolutions? Because perhaps the time has now come for us all to make our long overdue,

NEW YEAR’S REVOLUTION!