We must become competitive! The quintessence of the Greek problem is that this company… sorry, I mean country is not competitive! And it MUST become competitive. And the ONLY way to achieve competitiveness is to slash wages and salaries! Of course. Whatever else?

Well, of course labor is a factor of production. But it is not the only factor of production. And anyway, the Greek economy is not one of heavy industry. Sometimes, and this may come as a surprise to the troika, you may find that you need well paid workers with skills and the ability to produce quality goods which a low wage worker may not be able to achieve. And if you look at the really competitive economies with trade surpluses, these are not the ones with the lowest wages.

But all the same, before these demons of the IMF (sorry Christine, you are quite lovely and very chic, but you remain a monster where your job is concerned. Well look how DSK ended up? It is a job that is not only bad for everybody else’s health but yours too.) Well, anyway, before all these members of the Spanish Inquisition, otherwise known as the troika start pontificating and dictating just how far down the Greek wage should be slashed, they might try to take a look at what the real problems of the Greek economy are.

And by the way, since the country has been thrown into deep depression by the troika’s policies, wages had already gone down. Workers rights had already been abolished for most de facto, so why bother with the legislation? Surely, it’s the market that regulates this stuff isn’t it? Not where competition is concerned. Oh no! The only factor affecting competition is labour and labour must be cheap! Dirt cheap! And that’s an order!

Hmmm. Now I suppose it doesn’t matter that the whole taxation system has been ‘designed’ to put prospective investors off. The rules change every couple of months (the more so since the troika started running the Greek economy) every so often extra special taxes are slapped on everything from soft drinks to the electricity bill, out of the blue and so on and so forth. Rebates due have been forgotten because… We must balance the budget! So screw business. Not all that enticing for a prospective investor.

Next, red tape is not just red tape but positively red chains! Nothing works properly. It takes days and days or months and months, even years, to go through all the paper work needed to start up a business. Furthermore, from day one the business man is considered a liar, a thief, a cheat and treated as such. Not least by the tax authorities. And so on and so forth.

Today’s New York Times has an excellent article on a young man who went through hell to set up an export business in olive oil and olive products. Ultimately he prevailed, but just how many others have just given up in despair? Or taken their business to other countries as this young man nearly did? (To the UK, not some labour cheap country, because that was not the problem!)

So if any of these nice people working so hard to help Greece get its economy back on its feet again are sincere about that, perhaps they should spend more time and effort on the real problems of the Greek economy rather than cooking up red herrings like ‘the unit cost’ of production, i.e. the cost of labour.

Just as they say if you look after the pennies, the pounds will look after themselves. If you look after the real problems shackling the Greek economy, the cost of labour will look after itself. It always does in the end.

Reportedly this is what our dear friend, the middle prong of the troika, Poul Thomsen (the IMF guy) has said about the new and worse strait jacket the so called Greek government has agreed to without a murmur. Oh, and of course he also says that if the Greeks to not adhere to it strictly, it wont work. Clever that. When we all go belly up because of their crazy remedy of continual blood letting, it will be our fault.

We’ve heard of that somewhere before, haven’t we? Where was it now? Oh yes! The rapist’s defense! She asked for it! It was her fault for wearing a sexy dress (or whatever). So they’re off the hook . It’s their fault! Finger pointed straight in our face along with school yard rhyming taunts. The taunts of the bully against the weakling.

And okay, this is just another botch up leading Greece closer and closer to outright bankruptcy after the partial default and no one expects this idiotic recipe for recovery to achieve anything other than more recession, more misery and more suicides. 

Now, the other prong of the troika, Matthias Mors appeared very pleased with how the Greeks had slashed minimum wages (by 32% for the young) only this wasn’t enough and had really only gone half way. Half way to what? Well, the slash, he said had already made us more competitive. Really? How? And how the hell do they purport to have measured anything of all the nonsense economics they keep spewing out?

It’s not economics at all. It’s metaphysics when you claim to be able to predict what a country’s GDP will be in 8 years, or to have seen a tangible change in competitiveness (which, by the way, is also a mere metaphysical notion and not a tangible one the way they use it) only a few weeks after the slashes have been enacted? Did they really take effect in so short a time? And what figures bear any of this nonsense out?  Or is it perhaps that the most competitive economy is the one with the highest unemployment rate?

Sorry, but apart from metaphysics it also sounds like an oxymoron to me. Oh don’t you go using those fancy Greek words with me, my dear! The troika, like Thatcher before them, always knows best.

But this Matthias Mors (he’s the one with the horrible hair cut) did mumble something. Though delighted by the slashing of income, he did think that there was a problem with prices. They really should go down too. Well they should, shouldn’t they? So what does he propose to do about that then? The troika comes down hard on the so called Greek government when it comes to slashing pensions and wages but when it comes to getting prices into synch, that is getting them to fall, there is an eerie silence.

You see, from the little economics they know, they assume that with income being slashed demand goes down. And it has gone down. In which case prices should go down too. So why haven’t they? Is what Matthias Mors seems to be asking. However he has the answer even if he’d rather not look at it. Perhaps the main reason for prices going up in Greece is the exorbitant taxation that has been slapped on everything from petrol to soft drinks. That is, apart from pushing VAT up to high heaven, they have also put extra consumption taxes on things like petrol, natural gas and other necessities. (In fact something like 75% of the price of petrol is taxation. Consumption of petrol has gone down enormously. Only prices haven’t of course. No because it’s the taxes, stupid!)

But Mr Mors didn’t feel the need to dwell on it. Perhaps he realised what the problem was as soon as he’d mentioned it. Who knows? And who cares?

But back to Poul Thomsen’s remark of this being Greece’s last chance. Last chance for what? He didn’t say. Just ‘last chance’, implying what? That Greece will cease to exist? Does he imagine Greece is just a subsidiary company that will be wound down and have its assets sold off? That’s what it sounds like. And Greece’s assets will be sold off. Our so called government has already signed all Greek rights to everything away. But what then? End of story? The employees of a company that is wound down get laid off. Some get work elsewhere, others go on the dole for a while and that is that. Is that how Poul Thomsen imagines the end of Greece will play out? Like the ‘end’ of Lehman Brothers?

Well okay. We know their economics are Nonsense Economics. But it also looks as though their Politics are Nonsense Politics too. Well that makes sense. How else to explain the plethora of idiocies (Greek words again) mouthed by these undignified dignitaries?

But do be careful dear Poul, hubris is followed by nemesis before catharsis is achieved.

I have been unkind about Mr Juncker in this blog. Mainly because he has insisted on forecasting our GDP in 2020 with mathematical precision of point five or previously point nine, although there was no way he did not know this was arrant nonsense.

However there was something about Mr Juncker that made you feel a little sorry for him. First of all he always looked like a mournful walrus, only lighting up when he greeted the glamorous Christine Lagarde. Then he shuffled around the corridors of power in the manner of an old grandad and you often found yourself looking at his feet to see whether he wasn’t in fact wearing his slippers. Yet he wasn’t that old. He looked seventy but is not yet sixty.

So now he has announced he is stepping down from the leadership of the Eurozone. And this is where we start to warm to him. Of course he knew he was spewing nonsense! Of course he knew The Frau’s insistence on austerity uber alles was catastrophic and will only lead to a lot of pain and sorrow. Not least for those insisting on it. You could see it in his face. It was probably what made him look so mournful and so much older than he really is. He couldn’t take any more of this idiocy. So he stepped down.

Now here’s the punch line. The Frau has decided that this position is far too important to be left to any one of a lower race… I mean… well, you know what I mean! So the perfect choice for this position is Wolfgang Schaeuble! That nice gentleman in the wheelchair, who has no problem in spewing out economic inanities and  knows perfectly well that the austerity plan is the only plan there is. Anyway, the only man The Frau can trust to do the job properly.

It will be interesting to see if she manages to bulldozer her way through this one and impose her will on all the rest. I have little doubt that she will. Remember how they all dociley put their heads on the block one by one to sign her idiotic, catastrophic indictment of Keynes! Except for the British and the Czechs! We must keep saying that and acknowledge their clear headedness. Besides, how could a British Prime Minister ever sign a pact abolishing Keynes? Even David Cameron.

Still, if things carry on merrily, the way they have been doing up to now (and don’t forget IF is a very big word), then I have a suggestion I am sure The Frau will snap up.

Abolish Brussels altogether. Move the works to Berlin, the center of power. Also bring in a pact decreeing that no serious job can ever go to anyone other than a German of the right wing parties. Furthermore, since you can’t trust these lower… well of lower ability southerners and others to do anything right, impose a German governor to oversee (well impose really) policy in each and every country of the EU. And while we’re at it abolish the European Parliament. It’s just a waste of money and we must cut back on expenses.

Besides, at a stroke we shall have got rid of troublesome voices such as those of Nigel Farage and Danny Cohn Bendit!

(I hope to God The Frau doesn’t read this blog! She’s bound to take it very seriously.)

So we are finally going to be allowed to hold elections! Well why not? Before the elections are held, our so called government will have passed all legislation and signed all documents ceding everything to the loan sharks. Including the escrow account where all revenues and loans will enter and go towards paying the loan sharks first. And then and only then if some small change is left over, will it go to the requirements of the Greek state. If!

Anyway, they also have the solemn pledge of the two major parties that they will continue this catastrophic economic policy for Greece and not stray one iota from what has been decreed for us by the troika. Who of course know best.

In the event that either one of the major parties does not achieve an overall majority, they know that they will set up a coalition government between then and perhaps even assign the Premiership to our already tried Quisling. So nothing to worry about. The Frau is quite confident that business will carry on as usual after elections are held in Greece.

And there is a good chance she is right. As far as it goes. However, this will only exacerbate the Greek Problem yet again. A few months down the road when unemployment has gone even further up and recession even further down, it will suddenly be ‘discovered’ that, oh dear! The Greeks have not met their targets again! So, more taxes! More slashing of wages and pensions! More austerity! More destruction. But everything has a breaking point. As The Frau, who is a Physicist, should perhaps know.  And we are very close to it here in Greece now.

Personally, I can only hope that having graciously agreed to allow Greece to hold elections, the European Nomenclature under The Frau’s myopic lead, live to regret that decision.

If so, we will have done a service to the whole of Europe and the whole European idea. It’s up to us now. The Greek electorate. Not that I expect surprises. Don’t forget, the terror factor or FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) is rampant. But one must never give up hope.

In the fervor of their born again fundamental free market economics, the so called troika now dictating policy to Greece decided it was not enough for Greece to reduce its deficit by slashing welfare and pay in the public sector and pensions. That was good, of course, but not nearly enough. No. What is now needed is for Greece to become Competitive!!!

Well, yes, you might say. It is important to make Greece more competitive. We need investment in new plant, an overhaul of the whole system of granting licences and… No! No! No! You’ve got it all wrong!!!   When we say Competitive, the ONLY thing we mean is the reduction of labor costs! That’s all.

So, these nice gentlemen went about abolishing just about all labor laws in order to bring about a flexible labor force, one that can be hired and fired at will with no compensation. In short, workers no longer have any rights left. But that was not enough. Wages and salaries had to be slashed in the private sector too. A slash of 22% at a stroke, and of 32% if you happen to be under 25. Screw the young!

Now that will make Greece more competitive, we are told, and reduced unemployment (which has only soared to 21% through their policies, but still.)

Anyway, if they really wanted to go about making Greece (and the rest of Europe eventually too) more competitive, they have been very timid. They didn’t go nearly far enough in abolishing all workers rights. They really should have gone the whole way and abolished child protection. Children should be sent to work in sweat shops from an early age. First of all you can give them a daily wage of one Euro or less, and then think of all you will save from abolishing the state school system? Surely it should be self evident that Greek children no longer need to go to school at all if they are going to live in a competitive country?

And then wages and salaries. These should be abolished altogether. Workers can’t expect to actually get paid can they? How would businesses profit if they had to pay for labor? What we really need is a system of labor like the one they used to have in the southern US confederate states before the civil war.

Oh, and as to health care, all that nonsense should be abolished too. If a worker starts getting ill, there’s no point in squandering scarce resources trying to make him better. He’s not going to be very productive now he’s started losing his health anyway. So just shoot him through the head to put him out of his misery, otherwise the country’s economy won’t be competitive.

The Troika knows all this is self evident. And they’ve already told us so. No matter who or what you might decide to vote in your elections, policy will be dictated by us! Or else? What? Or else, you’ll only make it worse for yourselves if you don’t servilely prostrate yourselves to our iron will as you have been doing up to know under your nice politicians and technocrats.

Well, they are right. Things would only get worse. Sort of like this.

All the same, I can see us all start stamping our bare little feet on the ground in defiance, shouting Jehovah, Jehovah, Jehovah! So there!

P.S. I would like to thank the Guardian for reminding us of this excellent scene from Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

Yesterday we had a bit of fun with Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, and how well this lovely story described the realities of how Europe works (or doesn’t work rather.) And before the ink could dry (as it were) the Troika and our dear weary old friend Jean Claude Juncker struck again with even more of their discredited nonsense pronouncements!

This time it was back to the old theme of what Greece’s Debt to GDP ratio will be in 2020. They just can’t let go of that one! They simply love it! Even though everybody knows it is utter nonsense to try to predict such a ratio over such a long time span. Even the German Magazine Der Spiegel screamed out as much, adding it would be impossible to predict Germany’s Debt to GDP ratio for 2020 let alone that of an economy such as Greece’s!

But oh no. Juncker and the troika know better. They had the sheer audacity to state in an official report at that too, that now, after the partial default on her loans, Greece is expected to achieve a Debt to GDP ratio of 116.5% by 2020. Note the precision of point five! And this may be sustainable PROVIDED Greece sticks firmly to the policies imposed on her by the Troika till 2030. Okay. Great. Forward planning. And… yes, more arrant BS from people who not just should know better but DO know better. No way that they don’t.

So why the continual BSing? Let alone the obvious which I cannot help state again and again, that since the Troika’s policy has achieved an average annual recession of 6% so far, then by 2020 we will have lost something like 70% of our GDP and by 2030, we will have less than no GDP. So why do they insist on all this arrant nonsense and with such precision in official reports?

Well, the precision and official reports are merely used to try and convince everybody (perhaps including themselves) that they really do know what they are talking about, that it has been studiously calculated, and that people of lower intelligence and less knowledgeable than themselves should believe them because they really do know better.

But why insist on these idiotic forecasts? As Chrys, a reader of this blog, has pointed out, these predictions are about as valid as a meteorologist predicting what the weather will be like day by day through 2020.

So why? Well, I cannot believe that they do not know they are spewing out arrant nonsense. In fact this is precisely why they use the precision of figures with a fraction added. My guess (and it can only be a guess) is that they are in a panic. Nothing is working in the way they had imagined. Even Germany is failing on her austerity program not even managing to achieve more than a mere 42% of planned cuts.

The whole of Europe is being plunged into recession. The proven way of getting out of such messes is being outlawed by The Frau. So in my opinion, it boils down to panic and ideology. A lethal combination. People don’t matter, it’s the banks that must be saved. The welfare state is a very bad thing and must be scrapped. Wages must be rock bottom because we must have profits. In other words the orthodoxy of Chicago School Free Market Economics, with a bit of the German need to punish those who dare disagree with her, added to spice the recipe up.

Now the trouble is, as happens with all religions and this is just another set of religious beliefs, you can’t just say, whoops! Sorry! We got it wrong! No. You can never admit you are wrong! You have to keep pounding at it, insisting you are right even though everything is going wrong. Anything else is heresy and heretics must be burned at the stake.

No wonder they are in such a panic! And as for Jean Claude Juncker… why doesn’t he (along with all the rest of these bigots from The Frau down) just go home quietly instead of spewing out inanities at every juncture. They don’t even have to admit they made a God awful mess of everything. Just disappear the lot of you and we will find it in our hearts to forgive you.

But GO!

Lewis Carroll was a brilliant man. He was a mathematician and logician but above all, he was the author of Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass. This is called ‘literary nonsense’ but nonsense it is not! In fact if anyone wants to understand the European Mega Crisis (not just debt crisis, but crisis of everything Europe ever stood for, including democracy), reading the above ‘nonsense’ stories is a great help to understanding how the European so called leadership works.

I have here an excerpt from Alice in Wonderland and the way the infamous Queen of Hearts comports herself. Everything must be done as she decrees it… Otherwise… “Off with her/his head!” And of course she insists on absurd things. Now why does that remind me of The Frau? Furthermore everyone scuttles around trying hard to do what she wants or at least fudge it (like trying to paint the roses red because they came up the wrong colour) out of fear of losing their heads.

It could be a perfect description of the European summits. For instance when the Queen of Hearts decreed that Keynes should be outlawed, the economies of all European countries should be put into recessionary inducing strait jackets and of course this should be incorporated into their constitutions, or else off with their collective heads! Everyone (except for the UK and the Czech Republic) kow towed, fell flat on the floor before the Queen in prostration and agreed, even though they knew this was impossible nonsense, even the Dutch!

But this brings us to the best part of Alice in Wonderland. Alice who can see (as nobody else can) realises that this Queen of Hearts and all her entourage are nothing but a pack of cards! That is nothing to be afraid of! When The Frau, sorry I mean the Queen of course, orders the heads of the gardeners to be cut off, Alice hides them in the flower pots and saves them. And when the Queen demands to know if these heads have gone, the soldiers reply that they have, making her very pleased with herself.

Did they dare lie to her? Not really. They just found the fudge in simply forgetting to tell the whole truth, that not just the heads were gone, but that the gardeners were all gone completely. So the Queen is quite happy and the victims have been spared. One crisis resolved in a fudge, now on to the next one we must fiddle around with!

Doesn’t it sound just like how the European Union is working under the iron fist of our own Queen of Hearts (and all the fudges and ruses going on around her)?

So is Alice in Wonderland nonsense literature or a prophetic tract like those of Nostradamus, say? Or, perhaps it is the European Union that has been reduced to utter nonsense after all.

Anyway, for the moment for us here in Greece, it remains Off with our collective head! A dumb order from a dumb broad who can only deal in nonsense. Isn’t it time we all shouted out at the top of our voice:

THEY’RE ONLY A PACK OF CARDS!

The troika currently ruling Greece has decided that the country must change its national anthem because it is obsolete and glorifies subversive ideas such as: “hail Liberty”! of all things. So after long deliberations and yet another show of fake resistance, our so called politicians decided the troika was right. As they always invariably do.

But since they have no musical sense or any other sense in their heads for that matter, they assigned the choice to a committee of musicians, making sure of course that Mikis Theodorakis would not be on this committee, because we all know what he would come up with! And we simply cannot tolerate such voices in Greece any more!

Now, what the troika and the sorry little lot of politicians currently holding the reins of power forgot, was that throughout the history of modern Greece, the country has been subjected to repeated dictatorships of one kind or another. This one only being the next in line after the Colonels’ junta of 1967 – 1974. Well within living memory. So the Greeks are well trained in how to get by censorship.

Hence, the committee, drawing on this firm tradition of subversion (which even the troika cannot snuff out!) came up with the following:

Apart from the lyrics, the image shown is a perfect depiction of what Greece looks like today.

There is a very interesting article in today’s New York Times about the differences in policy of these two formidable ladies and about their friendship too. The basic difference is quite simple really. Lagarde understands how the economy works whereas Merkel does not. Lagarde knows it is important to stimulate growth otherwise you will never manage to grow out of a crisis. Merkel thinks she is a strict school marm who must severely punish her naughty pupils into submission and above all do so to set an example to others.

Merkel refused to be interviewed for the article, Lagarde did not. Lagarde is quoted as saying of Merkel that “You have to continuously explain, rationalize, dissect the whys, the pros and the cons to plead your case.” As a gracious French lady with diplomacy running in her blood, she adds, “It’s the lawyer and the physicist. [Referring to what these two ladies have studied.] I will continue to grit my teeth and smile and keep up the work.”

The lawyer and the physicist?  Or is all this just a nice way of saying, “She’s so dumb you have to keep hammering away at her before she even begins getting the point, if ever she does!” Of course Christine Lagarde has never said anything like that (at least not on record) but it does look like that when you read between the lines!

Well, we’ve had our say about The Frau’s jackbooted myopic single minded policies. And we’ve had our say about The Great IMF fixes. But what can you say about a government celebrating and jumping for joy over….? Well, over the fact that through all their combined efforts they have finally managed to bankrupt their country officially!!!

Hurray! Hurray!