There is a Greek saying  that goes: Μωραίνει Κύριος όν βούλεται απολέσαι (attributed to Euripides) which roughly translates as “whom the Gods would destroy they render stupid”.  Unfortunately, this is what has happened to the self proclaimed ‘leadership’ of Europe.

A very good article from the Guardian on the Spanish tragedy, entitled Austerity, the pain in Spain ends up with:”Until thinking changes in the North, it is unfortunately, safe to say, there will be no end to the pain in Spain.” And unfortunately, not only in Spain, but everywhere else too! Greece is beyond mere pain. It has been snapped into an excruciating Iron Maiden (Eiserne Jungfrau in German. For The Frau’s benefit). With worse to come.

Why? Well, because the European leadership has been rendered stupid by the Gods. It’s as simple as that. there is no other way to put. No analysis can explain the utter stupidity of this, I was about to say ‘policy’, but that it isn’t. So, this insane obsession with Austerity for its own sake! To achieve what? Fiscal rectitude? When all austerity can achieve is recession and as a consequence a severe dwindling of revenue. Which only leads to an even greater widening of the deficit, and the vicious downward spiral?

But the world’s best and brightest Economists, Nobel Laureates and all, have gone blue in the face trying to drum this simple common sense into the collectives little head of the European leadership (and not just The Frau, to be fair.) To absolutely no avail. They simply have no way of seeing plain simple common sense. If that isn’t having been rendered stupid by the Gods, then what is?

And another little Greek triptych they would perhaps do well to recall,

Hubris, Nemesis, Catharsis.

The full expression is “Out of the mouths of babes oft come gems”.  There is a similar proverb in Greek which translates as follows: “You learn the truth from little ones and madmen”, which is more fun, but essentially means the same.

I find myself ignorant of the equivalent French expression, but I am sure there is one. Proverbs encapsulates empirical wisdom amassed over time and throughout the world. With the French Presidential elections coming up, the French have adapted the following little snippet (apparently running wild over the Internet at the moment).

A Greek baby would answer in exactly the same way were it asked about our own collection of miserable, incapable, often corrupt, failures, now running for office here in Greece. In fact it appears (though this has yet to be officially confirmed) that our own general election here in Greece will be held on the same day as the second round of the French Presidential elections.

So the 6th of May 2012, will either be the day when things began to turn in Europe, or, more likely I fear, gloom and doom day. A day that pushed us all further into the mire of The Frau’s grand design for her final solution.

But not to worry. We won’t have to suffer for much longer! Don’t forget, on the 12th (or is it 21st? Anyway, thereabout) of December 2012 the world will end. I don’t know about elsewhere, but here in Europe the world will not end with a bang, nor even a whimper, as the poet tells us*, but with a mighty collective sigh of relief!

*“This is the way the world ends,

This is the way the world ends,

This is the way the world ends,

Not with a bang but a whimper.”

Last stanza of “The Hollow Men”, the poem by T.S. Eliot.

At least that is what Mario Monti said. Yes. Well. Well he would wouldn’t he? He is about to abolish workers’ rights at a stroke, and impose even worse austerity on the Italians. He must say something to pick up their spirits. Even if it isn’t true.

Meanwhile back at the troika, speaking to the European Parliament, we are told they blamed the disaster in Greece on Greek failure to implement their brilliant recipe. When asked, if that was so, why had not Portugal and Ireland fared any better? And why was the situation in Spain and Italy going steadily down the tubes, since all these countries were striving to do everything dictated by the brilliant troika who of course know best?

But that’s just a silly little detail. Look, we’re really going to stick it to Greece now their brilliant politicians have surrendered unconditionally and signed their whole country away without thinking. They just can’t not do our bidding now, no way, or else they won’t even have a country left let alone an economy! So you’ll see! This time it will work. If only for that reason.

Anyone of the troika ever heard of the proverb, taking a hammer to crack a nut? Hmm? No? I thought not. You see, though your object is to crack the nut so you can eat the content, if it is so hard that you decide to use not just a hammer, but a sledge hammer, like the troika, then you simply destroy the kernel as well, and are left with nothing!

Poor Greece. What a fate. But never mind! If Greece ceases even to exist, we have all the other economies we expect to get working properly by strangling them to death… To death? Well yes. But again, how many times must we keep saying this! Countries are not companies and they are not individuals. And however hard you try (and boy the troika is doing really well!) you can’t just liquidated them, like an insolvent company.

And as for genocide. It never has worked. Even when the best and latest in technology was used for this purpose. Well you know that Angela, better than anyone. Or you should.

So for all the savage cruelty being perpetrated in Europe (more or less throughout the whole continent), it won’t die. When things reach breaking point (and they will, I fear sooner rather than later, Mario), there will be a resilience none of you small minded little technocrats of limited scope could even imagine.

Little old ladies are not always wrong. Especially if they are spunky ones! We are not nearing the end. But we are nearing the beginning.

The Frau has been much maligned, not least by this blog. Yet she is a woman with a vision. A vision and an ideal for Europe. And almost single handedly, well okay, with a little help from her side kick Sarkozy, she is putting this vision into effect.

Her great success so far has been Greece which has now become the show case of what she wishes to achieve all over Europe. And here is The Frau’s vision and ideal of how she will create the great new Europe!

Several centuries ago, the ‘press gang’ was alive and kicking. This was an institution designed to ‘enlist’ men for the Royal Navy, at its peak of imperialism and overseas exploration. The conditions for seamen on board His Majesty’s vessels was appalling, the most notorious account of which is probably to be found in Mutiny on the Bounty*, at the hands of the infamous Captain Bligh.

Now in order to coerce the hapless seamen into the King’s service, the following practice was applied. The devious recruiter would give, or usually force, the prospective victim to accept the notorious ‘King’s Shilling’ which meant that he had of that fact alone entered into an irreversible commitment to serve the King at his pleasure. He had been loaned or ‘prest’ money by the King and was therefore indebted to him for life and had thereby forfeited his freedom.

This is precisely what has happened to Greece. Under duress, the country’s so called government has signed away just about every right a sovereign state enjoys for the privilege of being loaned (prest?) billions of Euro in order to pay the banks of the lending countries (Debt PLUS interest please note, punitive interest at that).

To ensure this privilege, the Greek government has committed the country to taking further recessionary measures. Measure designed not only to destroy the last vestiges of what remains of a welfare state, but the economy as a whole.  Our government has made a pact whereby not only will none of the loan money go into the economy, but furthermore, all revenue the Greek state manages to raise (not least through exorbitant taxation) will go into an escrow account from which money will be taken to pay off debt first and foremost.

Since we are being pushed deeper and deeper into depression, it is unlikely that any funds will be available for the Greek state at all. So we are on board the Bounty being whipped and keel hauled because we have been forced to take the “King’s Shilling” (or rather The Frau’s in this case.)

A team from the troika has already arrived in Greece to impose cuts of well over 11 billion Euro over the next two years. Never mind that Greece is supposed to be holding a general election in a couple of months. That is of no consequence to the troika! Greece shall do what it is told, whoever wins the election! Even the Communists! Her government has already signed the country’ death warrant in blood. So elections? Hah! That’s a joke if ever I heard one.

Now these cuts being nicely designed for us stand at something like 5% of current GDP, but are in fact much more than that even, given that Europe is forcing Greek GDP down at a monstrous rate. The idea for all this, we are told, is so that we can meet their (impossible) targets to reduce the deficit. This on an economy already contracting at an average rate of about 6% per annum. One simply doesn’t know whether one should laugh or cry!!!

So we find ourselves in Ionesco land again. We are being told we’ve got to save the country! This is the only way! We’ve got to reduce the population to destitution, starvation and slave labour for those lucky enough to have jobs! We have signed on the dotted line! We must destroy the Greek economy utterly in order to save it!

Isn’t that a bit of an oxymoron? Just what precisely will anyone have saved? A waste land of rocks and crumbling columns? What for? And this goes for the European directorate too. Don’t they know that if you kill the chicken that lays the golden egg (or even the ordinary egg!) then you will no longer have anything either?

As for the gentlemen and ladies (all 50 something of them!) of the current government and the PM appointed by the European Central Bank, they are lucky to be living in 2012. Less than a hundred or so years ago their fate would have been very different.

Still for all the smug certainty that they’ve got us by the… and curlies, well, as has been said so many times before, a country is not a company and business contracts are just that. Business contracts. Binding, perhaps, but in other contexts also lethal. Not least for those who forced them on weaker parties through threats, terrorization, and raw Might is Right concepts. Get out the Cat o’ nine tails!

But wait a minute! Revolutions were a European innovation, weren’t they?

*A real event, recorded in several books and two famous films. One in 1935 with Charles Laughton and Clark Gable and a remake in 1962 with Marlon Brando and Trevor Howard.

Both, actually. We are being warned, quite rightly I would say, that this lull in the on going Euro-crisis is not due to the ‘success’ (ha, ha, ha!) of the Greek bond swap or even Mario Draghi’s heroic, but insufficient efforts to circumvent The Frau’s aversion to anything even remotely resembling Quantative Easing (that is printing money.) No, this, it is maintained (and I would agree) is merely due to the fact that we are smack bang in the eye of the storm. Where, for those who know about such phenomena, it is calm. Eerily calm.

But today, here in Athens, Spring appears to have finally graced us with her presence! The weather is beautiful. A gorgeous sunny day, and for all the muck going on and the even worse and more horrible conditions we are being threatened will come, one can’t help but feel elated! So I would like to share this song with you:

In the on going campaign to terrify us out of our wits and keep threatening us that if we don’t destroy the last vestiges of our quality of life in order to become ‘competitive’, this clip shows us that the quality of life is not some objective given set in stone. And it is not exclusively an industrialised state, along with poisonous pollution China style and dirt cheap labour feeling miserable all the time. Which appears to be the current ideal (for the others that is, us, in other words, not those imposing it of course, decked out in their Hermes scarves).

But they are wrong (what again?!), quality of life is a subjective value. And we do not share the same vision as the troika or our so called government. Perhaps Ghandi was right! Lets go back to weaving our own clothes and churning the butter! It couldn’t be any worse than what is being planned for us as an alternative! And at least we may start singing again!

Just a simple (but very pertinent) quote for today. The Catholic Bishops conference in Italy noted, in connection with the new labour laws Monti wants to impose under The Frau’s orders:

‘Employees are not “merchandise”.

A small detail the so called Greek government seems to be unable, or more likely, unwilling to understand. For the Greek government employees are nothing but merchandise and all candidates for the chop. Just do away with their wages, even better their jobs, and that’s the answer!

To what? If only they had they faintest clue!

This newfangled metaphysical economics being brutally imposed on us, not only here in Greece, but throughout what was once Europe, is a lot like voodoo. In that the element of terrorization is of paramount importance. Victims thrown into hysterical fits of bodily shivers as the witch doctor stands over them brandishing a knife to cut out their heart. To make you feel better. It’s for your own good! And you bloody well musts start believing that or else we will cut off your very oxygen supply!

As a result, all the protagonists of this crazy metaphysical attempt to run economies on impossible premises (like believing you will increase revenue the deepr you push an economy into recession, and things like that) come across as very nasty people. People you’d just love to throw some excrement at or punch in the nose if only you could get that close!

And who are these monsters imposing such inquisitional torture on us to save our souls (?). Well, okay, not our souls the way the inquisition aspired to, but our, well their, banks. Anyhow they’re out to act as saviours! These people/monsters are people like the elegant Christine Lagarde (well being a savage monster goes with the job description), the dumpy homely Frau Merkel, the nice man in the wheelchair we really ought to be feeling sorry for, even the self serving colourless idiots of what used to be the European commission

So what have they achieved?  Well, so far, not even their main goal in life. To save the banks! (These are still very rickety and on the verge of bankruptcy). And in the meantime they have ruined the economies of Europe, spread misery and depression (in all sense of the word) throughout the continent, caused an alarming rise in deaths, hunger, homelessness, suffering and despair.

So is it any wonder they have generated so much hatred? So much negative energy that can never lead to anything constructive? Maybe they should change tactics at least. Maybe they could take a hint from Donald O’Connor!

Oh no, no, no, no! The private sector is beginning to get shivers up and down its spine. That’s precisely the kind of detail The Frau never stopped to think about. But she does find it difficult, we are told, to think through all the consequences and dwell on details like this. No matter how important.

Well, we don’t know whether Portugal will also have her lovely locks shorn like we did in Greece, but rumour has it they need a new ‘bail out’! But why? Unlike these pesky, unruly, undisciplined Greeks, the Portuguese did everything they were told by the infamous troika! And yet!

The ‘program’ didn’t work there either! Come on now, even Triple A Holland has found a gaping hole in her budget and everyone is throwing their arms up in horror! How could such a thing be happening? Well for God’s sake, you might like to review the policies you have been imposing with an iron fist! Try forgetting your dogmatic ideology of ‘Save the Banks!!! Screw the people!” (Courtesy David Harvey that slogan). And perhaps, just perhaps, you might start admitting that well, er, um, that wasn’t supposed to play out like that exactly…

But oh no. It’s not just the Pope who claims infallibility (and after all he does communicate with God through a direct line to heaven) but also The Frau. She is not wrong! There is no way she will ever admit to being wrong! It’s a contradiction in terms! The Frau? Wrong? Never!

Nevertheless, she may never admit to being wrong but she does do her pirouettes and back stepping and volte faces when needed. Provided nobody points out she was wrong! But unfortunately it is usually too little too late when she does try to back peddle.

But back to Portugal. An article in today’s Guardian outlines the sheer misery Portugal has been plunged into, and how the brilliant policy of cutting down social welfare expenses has lead to an alarming rise in deaths. And a need for a new bail out in one way or another! Will this never end?

Probably not if policy is not changed radically. All The Frau’s brilliance has achieved throughout Europe is the vicious cycle of austerity -> recession -> more austerity to make up for the holes in the budget recession creates -> greater recession, and so on.

The European Economies are heading straight for perdition!

Was Alexis Tsipras (leader of the left wing SYRIZA party in Greece) wrong when he said in Parliament, “But if we wanted to ruin our economy, we really didn’t need to bring the IMF in! We could have ruined it perfectly well on our own!”?

Amen.

The ink has hardly dried on the first savage cut in wages and salaries in the private sector in Greece, and we have our friend and savior Christine Lagarde declare that wages and salaries in Greece must be slashed even more savagely!

Yes, well, you see she knows this stuff. At least she thinks so. But that’s the way it is now, isn’t it? Just as with the whole horrendous banking horror story still playing out with the monsters unleashed roaming the world and gobbling us up!

In the name of Freedom of the Market! everything was deregulated to the point where these wizards could do anything they fancied to make a quick buck leading us to the godawful bubble that burst in our (not their) faces and caused the catastrophe of the world economy we (not they) are currently struggling with.

Now, though the mantra and the creed of the banking/financial sector was that there should be no government intervention! When the bubble did eventually burst, the cry went up, Save us governments otherwise the whole system will come crashing down! We are too big to fail!

So since all governments were already in the banks’ pockets they agreed. And as a result profit was privatised but cost was socialised. The taxpayers have been called on to foot the bill for the banks excesses. So much for no government intervention.

Now here, with Mme Lagarde we have a slightly different version of the same story. In this super human effort of the IMF and the troika to push the now emaciated fat lady that used to be through the key hole (that is the Greek economy) it has been ordained that pay in the private sector must reach rock bottom. The so called Greek government has been instructed to legislate accordingly.

Needless to say what the so called Greek government is instructed to do, it dutifully does. So? Mme Lagarde, close to no wages in Greece? Yes! Of course! The cost of labour in Greece must be aligned to the cost of labour in Croatia and Bulgaria! How else will you good for nothing lay abouts become competitive!

Well, okay. Maybe you are right. But then shouldn’t the cost of living, prices for goods and services also be lowered down to the levels of Portugal, Croatia etc? I mean, with lower and lower incomes how are we going to live in Greece if prices keep going up?

Nonsense! Comes the answer. We can’t legislate to fix prices! That would be going against the market! Prices and the cost of living will be regulated by the invisible hand of the market! Dummies you should know that! Ok. But then why don’t we just let wages and salaries be regulated by the market too? On no! You can’t leave that to chance! It has to be enshrined in the constitutions of all member states that wages and prices will be set at below subsistence level!

So there you have it. Banks must be totally free to run amok with profits till they bust the system, but then we the taxpayers foot the bill while they carry on as before. Similarly, wages and salaries must be kept to below a bare minimum by law, but prices can go up. We mustn’t intervene with that! Oh no.

So Mme Christine Lagarde in her expensive Hermes scarves and chic attire and  all the perks of an exorbitantly well paid job tells us Greek workers must no longer be given anything but a pittance, if that! Our own Minister of Labour tells us, isn’t it better to have a slashed salary than no salary at all? Sort of something better than nothing? (By the way, he’s another one calling himself a socialist!!!)

You can’t argue with them. They know what is right. Only the image of Christine Lagarde and her luxurious life style telling us to go hungry isn’t very nice. Though I’m sure if somebody told this nice lady that hey, they’re going hungry in Greece thanks to your policies, she would surely answer like a former Queen of her own country a couple of centuries or so ago, What? They have no bread? Well let them eat cake then!

For the same reason. That she doesn’t know any better than Marie Antoinette did. If you are shrouded under so many Hermes scarves, you really can’t see what is going on below!

I think it is fitting to let Leonard Cohen have the last word here.

You may have noticed the bouzouki influence in the orchestration. Leonard Cohen has (or had) a house on the Greek island of Hydra and has spent a lot of time there. I think this detail is apt.