By now it is common knowledge that all this raving about what the Greek Prime Minister has shamelessly called the Greek Success Story, is nothing but dastardly, cruel spin. There is a very good piece on this in the Guardian. The Greek economy is in tatters, people are suffering badly. Unemployment is rising and is expected to reach 30%, and any work available is either underpaid or not even paid at all. Social security has been reduced to a joke and health care is only being maintained, to the extent that it is by the sheer heroism and integrity of medial personnel.

So why all this nonsense about how well Greece is doing? Well because the criminals who thought up and imposed this policy, out of a desire to punish and not fix the economy in any way, are desperately trying to convince the world that “austerity works!” See? Look at Greece! Only not too closely of course. Just listen to what the Quisling PM and his cohorts have to say. Turn a blind eye to the grief and destruction that has been wrought.

We can in no way admit that our policy is wrong! What will happen to the markets if we do? Not to mention that one of our major players needs to win her election. Besides, we certainly don’t want to lose our cushy jobs. And the Greeks? And by extension all the other peoples of the south (and now climbing northwards)? Well, we don’t have to deal with that now.

Besides we do keep telling them and the world that this brilliant imminent success story depends on their doing exactly what we told them and achieving the targets. And of course we know that if they do do exactly what we tell them they will never reach the targets (since these are a contradiction in terms). So we shall blame the failure squarely on their shoulders, and anyway by that time The Frau will have been safely reelected and Mme Lagarde will be considering a different job or even retirement.

However, they will be right to blame the Greek government. It is all very well whining about how the troika demands this that and the other, but it is inexcusable for the Greek government to have no plan of its own, no idea what it wants to do, no thought as to how to get the Greek economy right and what paths it wishes to follow. And not a care in hell over the suffering of its people. It appears Mr Samaras is under the illusion that if he keeps playing at the good boy, teacher’s pet, and sucking up to Merkel in every way he possibly can, after her reelection she will reward him

What he has given no thought to is what he would want as a reward. Oh no. He expects her to decide that for him too. More money to throw down the plug hole? With no recovery strategy planned or even in his mind, that would be disastrous.

But then perhaps the only reward he really wants is not for his country but just for himself. A position in the European nomenklatura or perhaps the IMF.

Greece has fallen prostrate under the shock and despair, not least fanned by Samaras and his band of criminals. But if the country does not rise up soon and take the situation into its own hands and start planning and deciding for the benefit of the people instead of for the benefit of the governing classes, then I am afraid Greece will soon join Carthage in the history books of long forgotten peoples.

Jeroen Ren? Victor Anton Dijsselbloem, allegedly a pig farmer with aspirations of becoming a PIIGS driver, is visiting Athens today. He has been all gushing with praise over the Greek government’s determination in carrying out difficult policies. He has been all hidden hints, winks and nods, that maybe… just maybe… there may be a sort of a haircut. And maybe… just maybe, banks will be recapitalised directly and the expense will not be loaded on top of the already horrific debt load. Maybe. Just maybe.

He said nothing about what the programme has achieved still less about why it has not only not achieved much, but completely failed. He has not said anything about how the programme is directly responsible for the overwhelming level of unemployment, the horrendous shrinking of GDP, or anything else of prime importance you would have thought should be the concern of the head of the Eurogroup. No.

Well, that is not what he is here for. He is here to give The Frau (who was directly responsible for his appointment to such a lofty position despite obvious lack of qualifications and experience) a leg up back into the saddle of the German Chancellorship come September.

All of sudden The Frau has panicked. Despite her well laid out plans and sneaky underhand tactics, her own brew of toxic poison for others has begun to spill over onto her own turf and she is terrified her electorate will say, hey you simply botched things up, as production falls and unemployment begins to rise.

And she can’t have that! Hence the praise for “progress” in Greece. Dijsselbloem chortling on about the Greek government’s stamina as though we are talking about a very long distance runner. The Bild newspaper of “sell the Acropolis” fame all of a sudden discovering that the Greek government are doing a very good job (at what? dare’s one ask?) But what we need to impress upon the German electorate is that: You see it worked! It really did work! Look… Only don’t look too hard, because then you will see the devastation The Frau’s complete and utter mismanagement of the Eurocrisis has wrought.

And they all play along. They all know Greece has been destroyed. But it doesn’t matter. As long as The Frau gets voted in. So we hush reality up and sweep it under the carpet.

At least when Nero fiddled while Rome was burning he thought he was a great creative artist. What does The Frau think she is, I wonder? I know what we think. And perhaps, before long, all her sneaky underhand tactics and one track mind of being in the seat of power for its own sake, may well blow back into her own face.

The late Lady Thatcher was know as “nanny” in her days as despot… sorry prime minister. Which explained why her cabinet took so long to shake off her pernicious tyranny in the cabinet as well as elsewhere.  As toffs, wets or posh Etonians, they had been brought up by Nannies who instilled the fear of hell in them. So went the legend.

In an extremely interesting article on Germany : Hanging on to Mutti” by Neal Ascherson in the London Review of Books, he points out a sort of “Mutti” or Mummy Syndrome playing in Merkel’s favour. This is less the fear of God or Nanny that Thatcher inspired but more a kind of comforting element. The Germans feel Mutti will hold their hand through this. And of course Mutti or Mummy always knows best. Till you grow up of course and realise she didn’t.

But this article is extremely interesting for all the insights it gives us into what Germany is today, how collective thinking goes, and possibly even why they do not seem to have a clue what is going on in Europe. A point made through the fact that in electioneering the Eurozone crisis seems to play no part.

But back to The Frau, as I have dubbed her, or Mutti as Ascherson describes her.

“Merkel, he thinks [Erhard Eppler veteran SPD politician], lacks sensitivity to the outside world because she comes from the old East Germany. ?No awareness of recent German history influences her behaviour.? Education in the German Democratic Republic taught the young that the crimes of the past happened in a different country, the fascist-imperialist Germany which had no connection to the ?first socialist state on German soil?. Although she has nothing but contempt for GDR ideology, an Ossi like Merkel must see the complexes of Wessis, conditioned to flinch at any reminder of the Nazi past, as increasingly irrelevant.”

Apart from recent German history, another thing The Frau appears to have no awareness of is banking, how capitalism works and everything she is the leader in Europe arranging. How could she? “The first socialist state on German soil” did not deal in such matters. So she can be forgive for being less than clueless.

So here we have a nice Lady her people think of as Mutti, grappling with problems she has no idea about. Neither how they work nor, still less the kind of reactions she arouses in the rest of Europe who DO have a very strong awareness of recent German history and relate her destructive heavy handedness to it.

In conclusion I would like to end with Achersone’s exquisite summing up:

“As for Merkel, sometimes she looks placid, sometimes she looks cross and disappointed, sometimes she smiles politely at foreigners over coffee and cakes. So she reminds people of Mum, and those who want to keep holding her hand think they know what she wants. Others, in despair, confess they have no idea what she wants. These days, she seems to have no policy of her own. Instead, after a suitable delay, she takes on opposition policies in a diluted form. Intellectual critics complain that she has no ?idea?, no ?concept?. And to describe what she does, or rather doesn?t, they have coined a frightful new German word: Entinhaltlichung. ?It means what it says,? a Berlin friend tells me: ?Decontentification.?”

And that is the guiding light of where Europe is going. It’s not so much Euroscpeticism we need to fear in ruining any idea of European Union that may be left, but the “decontentification” of the project and the sheer brutality with which it is being enforced that cannot but help to bring to mind Germany’s Nazi past. Of which The Frau, remains unaware.

A recipe for disaster.

Interesting how words and their meanings blend together. Depression. The Great Depression. What will probably be known in the history books of the future as The Frau’s Unnecessary Depression. Economic depression being roughly defined as recession running amok. That is exactly what is happening in Greece and is beginning to threaten the rest of Europe too.

And here we come to that other meaning of depression. The psychological one. Being depressed, clinical depression even. Losing the will to even live, perhaps. Despair. Loss of hope and that sort of thing.

And another twist to the word, linking one meaning with the other. The willfully inflicted economic depression in the Eurozone has brought about a high level of psychological depression throughout Europe, leading to a horrible increase in suicides.

And what is more depressing: The leading lights of Europe, Merkel, Schauble, Barroso and others, didn’t care a fig for the depression hitting Greece, then the other countries of the south. They spun a vicious yarn of the profligate, lazy, good for nothing, sinful southerners who were merely getting their just deserts.

And then all of a sudden they realised what should have been quite obvious to them from the very beginning of this ill conceived, pathologically sadistic policy they relished imposing on others. That their chickens were now coming home to roost. That the recession is seeping into their own little domains which hey had supposed were immune. God only knows why they did suppose this, but suppose it they did.

And off go the alarm bells! And there starts the silly talk about silly ineffective ways to “deal with youth unemployment”! And you begin to wonder, why specifically “youth” unemployment? And not the rampant unemployment caused by the fiscal austerity toxic medicine overall?

And then they let slip that they are so concerned about youth unemployment, because what will happen if the youth of Europe suddenly begins to react? One way or another. Or every way conceivable. What if they riot and revolt? What if they band together and smash everything the nomenklatura of Europe is feeding on, like vultures, at the expense of the peoples of Europe?

So they huddle together over a bottle or two of Chateau Lafitte to try and dream up ways of defending their privileges and their fiefdoms. Because that is the only reason in hell they are concerned with the damage and destruction their policies have wrought.

And that is the most depressing thing of all.

Once again. The EU either refuses or is totally incapable of seeing the elephant in the room. We must do something about youth unemployment which has reached levels beyond belief in the south, and is growing throughout the EU.

Youth Unemployment, A problem on its own which must be solved by any crazy idea conceivable other than the only real way to deal with this problem. So, in Greece, the guinea pig for all these wonderful ideas, the first solution has already been given. Pay the young even less than the below subsistence level wage!

That way employers will hire the young! (And fire the older workers they have to pay a little more). Also, relieve employers of the young from having to pay social security dues. Also an excellent idea. It will cut labour costs. Oh, and pensions and welfare too of course, but never mind.

Well, all these ideas are very clever. And we can always deal with the problems they may cause later. Typical EU response. Appear as though you are doing something while in fact just keep kicking the wretched can down the road.

Now, in Greece, where wages have been slashed beyond belief and transportation costs have soared, many (not just the young) are finding that it is really not worth their while to take this job that has appeared, because it will cost more to get to and from work every day than what you get in your pay packet at the end of the month, IF you even get the pay packet.

It is not for nothing that the EU has somewhat unkindly been dubbed the EUSSR. The problem? Youth Unemployment. The solution? All sorts of state planned schemes and plans and subsidies and social engineering and command policies, while hypocritically wringing ones hands over the “lost generation”, when the problem is really simple and has only one solution.

A capitalist solution. Stop this economy destroying austerity. Read a first year economics text book perhaps. Forget these east German inspired ideologies. Get the economy growing! Give a large stimulus. Get things moving again. Think! Use some common sense and forget dogma.

What was it the man said? “It’s the economy stupid!”. Yes Frau Merkel, Schaible, Rehn, Samaras, Rajoy, Djisslbloem, and all the rest of this pack of sorcerer’s apprentices. Just get the economy working again and youth unemployment will solve itself!

This is the title of a brilliant 1967 film made by Michael Cacoyannis. It is a wonderful satire. One that is perhaps more apt to what we are living through now. This was the age of the fear of a lethal weapon being leashed on the world. The fear of nuclear holocaust.

In brief the plot is that a container of some unspecified lethal substance has fallen into the sea near a pre tourist backward island in the Aegean. The military personnel sent to look for it under top secrecy conditions disguise themselves as a film crew. This stirs commotion and excitement and before too long the island has become a bustle of tourists, youngster dancing crazy dances and all  that is associated with crazy carefree youth.

To cut a wonderfully funny long story short, the film ends with this ominous scene. As the hippie style youngsters are having a wild party dancing by the sea, this substance has been let loose and into the water. Into the water supply and into the sea. As carefree yacht jet setters looks into the sea they see the fish which have died in droves floating up to the surface, while everyone is drinking the water.

As the wild party goes on in a carefree abandoned manner, the world is being destroyed. But nobody has the slightest inkling that total catastrophe is imminent. And they just dance on crazily.

So what is the connection? Well, I have been getting the feeling more and more frequently that we are in fact living just such a situation. While the Eurocrats chortle that the worse is over, while that inane narcissist pretending to be the PM of Greece unashamedly spews on about some Greek Success Story he has concocted in his mine, while global stock markets are racing upwards for no apparent reason and hedge funds and banksters are having a real party, the world is being poisoned.

Maybe we won’t all actually die (though I dare say a great number of us will), as likely as not we are on the brink of total global collapse. Watch for it!

So the greatest and wisest of the European Union are gathering in Brussels for one more of those chummy get togethers with lots of French wines and delicacies to tide them through the long night’s negotiations. At best, these gatherings of the continent’s greatest minds end up deciding absolutely nothing. At worst they end up with the worse possible decisions, most of which are anyway modified, adulterated, misinterpreted or whatever suits each individual state. The ones with the clout that is. The others have meekly and obligingly effectively abolished themselves.

Anyway, today’s gathering is, we are told, to discuss ways of putting an end to tax evasion! Imagine that? I thought it was something most self respecting ministers of the EU member states indulged in themselves. (The French guy was only different in that he got caught). But there is another factor in this sudden zeal to put and end to tax evasion.

A full admission that tax evasion is and has been rife throughout the Eurozone? So far we have been lead to believe that it was only the vile, venal, lazy and profligate Greeks who evaded their taxes. To the extent that the IMF Chief Christine Lagarde aka Marie Antoinette, who never ever indulged in tax evasion in her life… well…um, she is under investigation for other nasty things she really should not have been doing… but still.

Anyway! As I was trying to say, the way things were presented it was only the Greeks who evaded their taxes, so much so that the aforementioned lady stated blandly that she had no sympathy for little Greek children going hungry because their parents did not pay their taxes! Hmmm….

Anyway, be that as it may. This is bound to turn out to be another EU red herring where a lot will be said, a lot will be drunk and even more eaten, but nothing will be done. Or if anything at all is done, it will result in ruining Luxemburg. Austria and perhaps some others, while all the wealth resulting from tax evasion will migrate deeper into Asia. Probably Shanghai. An excellent opportunity for the growing giant of Capitalism!

Still, I have a suggestion. The next Euro Summit, once it has solved the matter of tax evasion, should turn to abolishing prostitution. It’s just as abhorrent! And just as easy to put an end to.

And more Eurononsense nebulous non thinking.

Since Youth Unemployment has soared exponentially in the South of Europe – in Greece it is officially around 64 – and since unemployment is growing all over the Union, the infamous Powers That Be, made up of star IQ people such as Barroso and Schauble for instance, have suddenly started talking about doing something about it.

Unfortunately as you would expect from their performance so far, those determining policy in Europe have one again refused to see the Elephant in the room. They come up with all sorts of vacuous ideas, preferably ones that don’t cost much. They talk about training programmes, improving education, and other dead end, dead loss schemes.

Perhaps worse of all, not how to increase employment but how to replace older people in the workforce with younger ones. In other words, reduce youth unemployment at the expense of older employment. Which, in their vicious little minds is better for two reasons. First and foremost, that you can pay the young so much less, and implement schemes where no social security is paid and other such lovely things.

Second, however, somewhere in the back of their minds, they do realise that this is potentially dangerous. Youth will become radicalised!!! Shudder, shudder! They will start to question the European Union! Terrible things will happen! That is terrible things will happen to their jobs, their power and the gravy train they have been enjoying for so long.

Yet still, though they fear a potential new French revolution that may send them to the guillotines, or deprive them of their absolute unaccountable power and cushy jobs, they refuse even to contemplate the single, only possible answer to the problem.

Stop your nonsense economics! Stop strangling economies to death! Stop you rampant destruction of Europe!

All you need do in order to restore employment, and not only youth employment, is to start implementing sensible, well tried and well proven economic policies. Stop the sadistic, vicious, barbaric treatment you all so enjoy meeting out to the weaker and more vulnerable sections of society.

But no. Does any single one of that degenerate Mafia from Merkel, Samaras, Rajoy to Barroso and Van Rompuy even hint at the idea that in order to create jobs, real jobs, not nonsense jobs that are underpaid with no future after a few months, is to stimulate the economy and get it working again. That is the last thing they want to even think about, let alone do.

So will this lead to the end of the very EU and not just the Eurozone?

The way this institution that had promised so much has turned into an instrument of repression and destruction, perhaps it is high time that it did,

The worthy Finance Minister of Greece, Yannis Stournars has rather smugly stated that the Greek people have shown (and are showing) great maturity and patience with regard to the troika policy being imposed because, he claims, they can see that it is working. The troika supporting Kathimerini newspaper, formerly a prestige newspaper, reiterated this in yesterday’s editorial.

Well now! What an idea! It is true that they have all been hyping great success, and of course quoting German “opinion” (such as the notorious Bild newspaper), as evidence of the truth of their ludicrous statements.

But what has really given the lie to all this nonsense about “success’ and growth being just around the corner, is the very troika report itself, which after rehashing the “success” story about how the deficits have gone down (that is all the so called success consists of, a highly questionable conclusion given how these figures have been “achieved”) goes on to underscore how extra measures must be taken to secure targets, measures that had been calculated at another 4 billion, but are now closer to 8 billion, and who knows how many more billion before the summer is out?

As to the gushing praise from the likes of Bild and other publications in Germany, everybody knows that this is just pre election crap, because if Greece is again shown as lagging behind, missing its targets going to the dogs and so on, it would not do The Frau’s ratings much good, and they don’t want that.

But while what the German press is doing may be understandable, what the Greek government and its loyal press is doing is not. They know very well we are heading straight off the cliff, probably just after the summer and that the only thing their troika dictated (and obsequiously followed) policy is doing, is pushing the last nail in the coffin.

Yet what do we get? Instead of using this as a bargaining chip with Germany, they continue in the His Mistress’ Voice mode, expecting what? The full hair cut? Not even that. Stournaras has already said as much. No haircut, just an extension of repayment schedules and perhaps a slight reduction in interest rates. Whereby Debt/GDP will remain UNSUSTAINABLY high.

So one wonders. What the hell are they trying to do, other than keep their jobs for as long as they can? Well maybe that is all they are trying to do. But if they want to go gracefully when their time comes they should think twice about what they are saying.

Samaras triumphantly talks about the Greek Success Story in China, inviting them to join it, (hollow laugh)! But worse of all is the Stournaras claim that the Greek people are showing great maturity and patience because they know this is all leading to recovery and growth.

However, although he is right to point out that the Greek people are no longer reacting to this cruel and savage treatment, that they are no longer protesting against the complete destruction of their economy and their very lives, he is wrong to attribute this to “maturity” still less to anything like patience because we know he is doing the right thing!

The truth is that the Greek people have slumped into deep depression, that they have lost all hope, that they no longer believe that anything can be put right, and that far from being mature and patient, Greek society has been knocked senseless and is moribund. It is complete despair keeping them off the streets.

Nevertheless, Samaras and his eminence grise Stournaras should be very wary of uttering these statements. They are nothing short of hybris. They can hardly rely on this state of oblivion continuing forever. Nor are they justified in turning a blind eye to the root cause of the inertia. And though Samaras may have actually started to believe his own nonsense, Stournaras has no excuse in not knowing any better,

For when the inevitable happens, the crash, the disappearance of the last vestiges of an economy, which they know will happen because that is exactly what the policy they are so savagely and harshly imposing is designed to achieve, their empty boasts and pontifications will be remembered. And this will hardly endear them to the populace.

I dare say it may be rather uncomfortable for these gentleman when they realise this lack of reaction was not due to “maturity” and “patience”, after all, but to complete and utter despair. A despair that will not continue to be expressed in total, hopeless prostration, but will go nasty. Very nasty.

It is not recovery that is just around the corner, but Nemesis. A bit of humility in such a drastic, hopeless situation would be far more advisable.

Out pops the troika review on the Greek programme. Like a report card after daddy has donated new goal posts to the school. Greece is doing well. On track. Fiscal targets within reach. Great!

The hapless Yannis Stournaras (no doubt working hard to gain a position in Brussels), also upbeat. In 2014 unemployment will fall and growth (yes growth not the beginnings of recovery) will return.

Hallilulija! It worked! Austerity worked! For all you doubters! See? Greece! The new poster boy after Ireland?

Well. Not exactly. After the hollow praise, you read on. Well, 2014 will be better… but after that there will be the consequences of the depression. High unemployment set to remain for at least another 3 years. But that’s all right because wages will be slashed way below subsistence level. And that is the target. Not competitiveness.

Oh, and the fiscal targets, well, yes. But the revenue administration must be fixed up, because it hasn’t. No matter that with high unemployment and wages below subsistence level, there won’t be much income to tax!

Yes. they say. So austerity will have to continue. Ad infinitum. Why? Because it has done so well in putting the Greek economy to rights?

Get us out of this looney bin quick! And don’t start telling me that oh! If we leave the Euro unemployment will rise to 30%! It has. We won’t be able to buy fuel. We can’t anyway! Nor medicines. Those neither. People are dying because of the inability to access medicines already.

Come on. Give it up! Stop whipping the wretched horse! IT IS ALREADY DEAD!