The formidable and infinitely wise policies (not economic policies, but ones of attrition rather) concocted and brutally imposed by the insidious Berlin-Brussels axis of evil on what was once an advanced humane society (to a great extent) have turned the members of this society into the world’ greatest acrobats!
Well, though they were once considered citizens, which became a dirty word, they were subsequently transformed into consumers (not least by the so called centre left, social democrat parties) and then again changed fundamentally into acrobats, since they are being deprived of the wherewithal to consume .
This is the result of mixing and imposing all the worst traits of free market neo liberalism with all the worst traits of a command economy while banishing all and any good traits of either. For instance, you impose (and that is the operative word) what is known as a flexible labour market. That is you rescind all laws protecting labour and related rights, slash wages and return working hours and such to Dickensian times in the spirit of a free market economy.
Okay, so that’s supposed to make you what is metaphysically know as “competitive”. At the same time, however, you impose such taxation on everything that leads to loss of property, pauperisation and… well yes, a drastic drop in consumption and deflation.
Now in a very succinct and interesting piece published in Professor Varoufakis blog it is explained simply how the Irish Success Story, being so wantonly trumpeted, is nothing of the kind. How the overall economy remains in a mess with unemployment, a growing debt to GDP ratio and all the rest of it. And that is the state of the Troika’s poster boy.
As for the Troika’s dunce pupil, Greece, the situation has become impossible. Lots of talk about how things have improved, how interest spreads have indeed fallen, how a primary surplus has been achieved and other such. Well, I don’t know if these selective (and not necessarily accurate) figures constitute an “improvement” in any way. What I do know is that there is no longer a functioning economy in Greece. The market has collapsed, the banks do not function, GDP has been slashed by a quarter and recession is continuing, labour has returned to the very dark ages, unemployment has soared and deflation has set in.
What we do know and can see is that this toxic mixture of all the evils of a command economy with all the evils of free market neo liberalism inspired by Germanic flair hasn’t worked, isn’t working and will not work. The time when the whole edifice will collapse into a pile of smoking rubble reminiscent of what the Germans had reduced Europe (including Germany) to at the end of the second world war is near, but we do not know how near.
There is the date of the Euro elections, but whatever the result of these, it has become quite clear that though the Brussels-Berlin Nomenklatura can see their wizard plans are a complete failure, they have no intention of trying to change things at all.
So although the European Citizen knows we are headed straight for a collapse of this catastrophic situation imposed by obsessive, warped and German inspired ideology, he does not know when this will happen. So while he is being impoverished, punished, having his property expropriated, his life expectancy reduced, his infant mortality rise, and all the other great achievements the Greek PM (for one) is being commended for by The Frau, he is trying to hang on in the hope that he will survive till D Day.
However, in such a pernicious environment, when new taxes and new slashing of all benefits and welfare and whatever else was to the benefit of the Citizen, this is proving more and more difficult. In short, the European Citizen has been reduced to a circus act. He is on a high wire, with no safety net underneath, trying to keep his balance because one small slip and he will fall into the shark infested raging sea underneath.
The hope is that he will manage to cross the wire and set foot on safe ground. The fear is that The Frau and her coterie will succeed in destroying everything completely before he can reach base. The good news is that base is in sight, not all that far off. The bad news is that his position is so precarious and The Frau and her coterie so evilly single minded and obsessed with their own certainty (and so loath to admit any failure on their part) that they will do everything in their power to prevent this.
A bit of deja vue here when it comes to the German policy of the irrational, isn’t there?
Berlin 1945