Barroso focuses on youth unemployment

We are told.

He noted various schemes that have been targeted at reducing youth unemployment, including the Youth Guarantee, which would promise young Europeans either a job, further education, or work-focussed training, at the latest four months after becoming unemployed. Barroso said:

I really saw a commitment of the heads of state and government to address this problem with the sense of urgency required.

Herman Van Rompuy calls for jobs policy

There is a need for a specific employment policy, making our growth more labour-intensive.

It appears that these top job over paid sinecures at the summit of the EU nomenclatura turn your brain into mush. Unless of course their brains were always mushy. Which is probably what made them eligible for the job in the first place. After the likes of Jacques Delors, the likes of Angela Merkel wanted “Noddies” for the job. That is yes men with mush in their heads instead of brains.

So. What wonderful proposals! The “Youth Guarantee”, and all that is supposed to entail. Training for jobs that aren’t there for instance. Not to mention the fact that most of Europe’s unemployed youth are already well educated. But never mind silly little details like that.

No what about Herman. “making our growth more labour-intensive”  Yes! That’s a great idea! I guess he forgot that the whole idea of capitalism is to make it LESS labour intensive, and more productive! But besides that moot little point, “growth” he says. What growth Herman? Where?

More bombast, waste of time. waste of words, preening self importance. As to the “urgency” of heads of state and government to address this problem….  Hmm… I suppose he saw that somewhere deep down Merkel’s lovely eyes or somewhere. Or perhaps he had already hit the Bordeaux wine. (Which is the only reason why they hold these conferences anyway).

But just how do these bozos not realise, or rather not even dare hint that (deep breath) unemployment is the direct result of recession (and rampant unemployment the result of rampant recession), that recession is the direct result of the stringent austerity policy being clamped down on Europe by the infamous iron boot. And that if you do not make a complete about turn on this policy of strangling and destroying economies, you aren’t going to get very far with job creation schemes and other such nonsense are you?

The solution to unemployment is simple. Stimulate growth. And here indeed there is no other way to create jobs while strangling an economy through brutal austerity.

Of course, it is not as if either of these two gentleman do not know this. It’s just that they do not dare say so. And how could they possibly, when their very jobs and outrageous pay and perks that go with them, are dependent on the Mistress. And all she wants is AUSTERITY! There now! So spare us the nonsense waffle at least!

Here we go again. The best and brightest, or, as the official description is the “heads of state and government” of the EU are all gathering together again in Brussels. To waffle, to take stands, to play to their galleries (especially the ones with elections ahead). To make vacuous statements about the need for growth. To pretend rising youth unemployment should be dealt with…

And a whole lot of other empty talk and posturing leading to nothing. Van Rompuy (who? Mr “who are you”) reminded that a decision had been taken to promote growth last summer. Indeed in had in words. What about some action? Action? The EU does not go in for such antics. Such as concerted action.

For all efforts, hopes, idealism or whatever else, the EU remains a collection of different nation states, each one only caring about how to promote its own interests against the union, with growing hostility between them and governed by narrow short sighted self interest. And Germany, now, feels free to throw her weight about and preen herself as top dog because, she feels, WWII is long past by now, isn’t it?

Well, we can hardly deny it. Out of political correctness or anything else.

Stamatis Phasoulis is not a politician, he is not an economist, he is not a technocrat. Subsequently he does not analyse politically, economically or technocratically. He is a man of the the theater, director/actor and maybe more. A brilliant satirist. And of course the image is his domain. So Stamatis Phassoulis in an interview on Greek state television last night made a brilliant analysis of an image.

The image was of Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor. He said, picture her in black and white. Think in terms of old photographs. You will realise that she wears a uniform. It is always the same. A tight fitting uniform. Something that is much clearer in black and white, because she has the same uniform in different colours.

Her hair, always the same too, brings to mind the  old fashioned way of cutting hair. You put a bowl or a saucepan on the head an cut away the protruding hair. This was the sensible, disciplined way of cutting hair. No fancy stuff. Rigour. Cropped hair and a uniform.

Does the policy she insists on and her way of imposing it surprise you any more?

Once again (when will it all end!) the troika has got its forecasts wrong.

“Greece’s central government budget had a deficit of ?813m at the end of February, deputy finance minister Christos Staikouras has told reporters.”

Of course the troika will say this is all the fault of the Greek government not doing the job properly. And the answer? More taxes on those Greeks who do pay their taxes. However, the reason for the short fall is that under conditions of nearly 30% unemployment, deep continuing recession, the economy has come to a standstill and can no longer yield the budgeted revenue.

VAT revenue has dropped to the abyss because consumption has dropped to bare necessities. Now, for all their faults, that is not the government’s fault but the fault of the brutal stringent austerity being imposed. The troika says ok, never mind, just continue the debilitating tax on property paid through the electricity bill. Despite the fact that over 600,000 households (and rising) have already had their electricity cut off because the can’t even pay the bill for electricity, let alone the exorbitant tax on their humble homes.

Greece has simply been wrung completely dry. There is no economy left to speak of. However high the troika in all its brilliance and the Greek government in theirs decided to hike taxes, the budget will still have a deficit, the social security funds will run dry because the people able to pay dues have dropped by over half, and Greece’s debt remains completely unsustainable.

Whether Greece leaves the Euro or not, it will default on its debt, in an orderly or most likely disorderly way. Pensions will stop being paid, because funds will dry up. People no longer have enough income to pay for heating, or medicine (because state funds for health have also been strangled), so really, where is the sense in all this?

Apart from a sadistic puritan pleasure in watching “sinners” suffer, by the holier than though pack, I simply cannot see what any of this is in aid of.

Well now, what do you mean? You know, the old joke that a camel is a horse designed by committee, because that is what the Eurozone is looking more and more like. A gaggle of bigots endlessly meeting and endlessly talking in repeated all nighters, hours and hours of pointless debate that invariably end up with a statement putting off any serious decisions to the next meeting.

Worse, perhaps, is that other little foible, mostly (if not exclusively) encountered in the Germans. When they can’t just shout “Nien!” and click their heels in our faces, they say, Jah, okay… and before the ink has dried on whatever they may have signed they start back tracking. Yes, a banking union is good, but we mustn’t act in haste! God forbid! We must take it step by step.

And before that, under Monti’s pressure, Jah… banks can be recapitalised directly through the ESM, but… first caveat, this will only apply to countries not yet in trouble (thank you) and second we must establish a banking union first. But we can’t do that in a hurry! We must put it off till next summer. As if they had all the time in the world. That is the committee designing the horse which turns into a camel in the end.

Now you could say that it makes good sense to do things slowly and put some real thought and planning into it. You could say that. But you would be wrong. The only reason Germany procrastinates this way is to negate anything and everything she has been forced to agree to but will be damned if she will do it! Like Eurobonds “over my [Merkel’s] dead body”. Or growth. When she knocked the wind out of Hollande’s sails by saying Jah! to growth. Of course. Only pushing it quietly out of all following agendas. Or, in effect, referring it to committee.

In his blog, having been accused of being anti Europe, Paul Krugman makes a very pertinent remark:

“My problem” he says “isn?t with Europe, it?s with the bad policies that are ripping Europe apart, and with the officials who for whatever reason ? intellectual inflexibility, ideological blinders, or, I suspect, sheer personal vanity, an unwillingness to admit that they were wrong ? have refused to consider any modification of these policies despite years of disastrous results.”

So we should count ourselves lucky if we do manage to end up with a camel even. As to the desired horse… With that lot at the helm, you must be joking!

It could be the new parlor game. “The troika says” and each time the troika says something even more ludicrous than before, and you just have to jump to it and do it because otherwise you lose! The troika says stand on your head for twenty minutes, and you do. The troika says, throw off your clothes and run in the freezing rain for two hours, no matter the consequences, and you do.

Now it doesn’t matter when you die of pneumonia because you’ve done what the troika says and that’s all that matters, because otherwise, you lose.

And tremble, tremble, shiver, shake! God forbid that you should lose to the troika! They’ll cut off your life support!

And don’t you dare say that since we have already gone completely bankrupt as a country, what difference will it make? Whatever life support we may be on it is hardly working very well, now is it? No heating, scarce food, no work, no play, no rights and you have to keep paying and paying and paying in taxes and more taxes, because the programme never works, but you still have to keep paying money you simply do not have!

But that is the way of parlor games. They are silly.

But at least when you lose in a parlor game you realise it is not the end of the world! And when we tell the troika to go to hell and …. all that. You know something? Not only will we realise it is not the end of the world, but the realisation may fire us into action and out of this depressed debilitating inertia.

Now they’re getting their knickers in a twist over a non issue. The cap on Bankers bonuses. Why is it a non issue? Because, per se, it is not the reason why the bubble ballooned out of all proportions and why we are still suffering from the fall out. Particularly in that surreal, irrational place called Euroland.

The reason the bubble blew up and burst in our faces was precisely because of free market economic dogma. Everything had to be deregulated. The market would regulate itself! Only it didn’t. The solution is not a cap on bonuses. The solution is to reinstate all the banking and financial regulations the free market dogma zealots abolished. After all, they did work extremely well, before these fanatics climbed into the ascendance.

But that is precisely why such a fuss is being kicked up over the bonuses. It is a non issue. A red herring to disguise the fact that the free market economic zealots running what used to be the European Union simply do not want to reinstate the regulations that worked. They prefer to sadistically torment the people of Europe through their stringent austerity with NO growth. Which is obviously not working.

So this show of a supposed confrontation between big bad Britain and the holier than though European moral zealots, is just trumped up so that they can avoid dealing with Europe’s and their banks real problems. Most of theme remain insolvent anyway, and should Italy blow her top, and well she might after all, they may well have the fate of humpty dumpty.

Besides as the American Professor Nicholas Economides pointed out, there is no sense in such a cap since it is the easiest thing in the world to get around. So you will not even have achieved any kind of a “cap” on bonuses, even if you do engrave this in stone in the EU.

So think again my pretties in the Ecofin, or else all the kings horses and all the kings men will not be able to put the financial edifice you are trying so strongly to defend to the detriment of people, together again. Ever!

After Peer Steinbuck’s (SPD) clanger dropped during a state visit by the President of Italy, that Italy had elected two clowns, it was now the turn of a CDU dignitary to show the heights of German diplomatic language.

Klaus-Peter Willsch, a member of Angela Merkel’s CDU party, has even declared that Italy should leave the eurozone, rather than hold fresh elections, if a majority of the population will not support the measures needed to support the eurozone.

Whoops! Another terror campaign, like the one waged and won against Greece, aimed against Italy this time? But this fellow went on, in his most diplomatic of ways, and stated:

“A monetary union will survive only if it benefits all of its members.”

Which is rather a funny thing for a politician of the German ruling party to say. After all, after imposition of The Frau hegemony over Europe, the only members the Euro benefits is Germany and a few other northern ones. For the rest it has brought about a a fall in competitiveness, recession and spiraling unemployment.

So if this fellow is trying to bully Italy, the way Greece was bullied with the threat of an exit from the Euro, he would do well to think again before he causes a stampede to the Euro exit door. Something which will most certainly not benefit Germany, but will probably be so much better for Italy, France and even the little guys running up behind.

Well now, just what does the Economist imagine? That this is something new? And especially from a British magazine, this can’t help sounding just a little facetious. Or does the Economist not see how much of a clown Cameron is? Or Osborne, who has made one of the best jokes. That the Moody’s downgrade proves he must carry on with his destructive austerity policy. Though the sluggish performance of the British economy that his policy has induced was the reason for the downgrade.

And as for Barroso or Van Rompuy, all we have to do is just say their names and we start hooting with laughter. Take the Mario Monti put down of Van Rompuy, when he got up to make his statement of full agreement on everything, after the Summit Conference last year. Monti’s reaction was tantamount to “shut up and sit down!” we have not agreed on anything yet. And Rompuy, the President of the European Council, supposedly a notch up from the once powerful (remember Delors?) President of the Commission… just sat down and shut up.

So Italy hardly has the monopoly on clowns, if clowns they be!

The Economist should have done better. Another clown in the European leadership is not worth a front page.

What would be worth front page news is “At last! An intelligent person, with a head on his/her shoulders, a brain in his/her head, with intelligence, creativity and above all guts, has actually been voted in!”

Now that indeed would be news. Unfortunately it does not look at likely to happen. Unless it is the “clowns” the Economist has chosen to deride, that pull the mask off the real clowns running Europe at the moment, and manage to wake us all up.