Not unlike Zarathustra, George Soros commands a prominent position in today’s world. Not for deep thinking philosophy, perhaps, but because he is “the man who broke the bank…” not of Monte Carlo, but of England. No less. And since in today’s world the only thing anyone reveres is money and making it, by fair means or by foul, that is irrelevant, George Soros is one of the very big men of today.

So perhaps we should pay heed to what he says after all. In an interview published today, he is quoted as having said, among other things, the following:

I am terribly concerned about the euro potentially destroying the EU. There is a real danger that the solution to the financial problem creates a really profound political problem.

Germany needs to realise that the policy it imposes on the euro area – the austerity programme – is counter-productive. It cannot actually succeed. At the moment they [the south] is being pushed – unwittingly, not with bad intentions, but the effect is that they are being pushed into a long lasting depression and that is what is happening to Europe. And it may last more than a decade, in fact it could become permanent, until the pain is so big that eventually there may be a rebellion, a rejection of the EU, and that would then be the destruction of the EU, which is a terribly heavy price to maintain to preserve the euro, which is meant to be just a servant of the EU.

The only thing I would like to humbly add, perhaps because I cannot bare it otherwise, is that “the pain” has already become for many and will become for many more “so big” that the rebellion will come, I believe, before the decade is out.

Now if we really want to get high on rosy optimistic thoughts, there is a smidgen of a hope that the leaders of Europe will be jolted into waking up. Not necessarily those in power today who are the most short sighted, misguided, pig headed lot to have been collectively about ever. Well, okay excluding the lot around in Europe circa 1914, maybe.

But for all The Frau’s and her side kicks’ efforts, we do still have a semblance of democracy in Europe. There still is the hope that leadership and fundamental policy can be changed without outright rebellion. Though a rebellion, of course, can take many forms, not all of which are violent and with blood.

And that is the hope. That the inevitable rebellion against this vicious, moralistic, sadistic and grossly ineffective Merkel led policy, will come to an end by fair means rather than foul. And BEFORE the decade is out!

It has been said that when the pressure is off, the EU reverts to its natural inertia. It is certainly true that The Frau has contrived to put the pressure off at least until her elections. But this has only been achieved by sweeping the rubbish under a rather bulging carpet.

Meanwhile the budget looms ahead, not to mention the inevitability of a grand write down of Greek debt. But Greece is doing everything she can to accommodate the plans of one politician, not even one country. To her own detriment. The more she lets the can to be kicked down the road to the benefit of others but not herself, the worse the situation becomes in Greece.

The inevitable results of this policy, or lack thereof, are beginning to manifest themselves dangerously. Social unrest is growing. The government is getting off on playing strong man by unleashing police violence and mobilising all strikers, thereby limiting, it thinks, the effects of strikes.

But though they appear to love their “no nonsense” image, it really is not doing the country any good. Already the unpunished rampant police brutality is showing Greece up and returning us to an image that was rife in the time of the junta. Not to mention that bottling up all dissent and protests through police might, is not solving the problem but exacerbating it.

As to the eternal obsession with taxing the country dry while pushing it further and further into recession, that is the result of making pleasing The Frau your sole priority and to hell with your people. All that matters is that you are the one called Prime Minister, or just Minister.

Back in Euroland is there any concern over the deep rooted and growing problems of a Europe falling deeper and deeper into recession? Is there any concern over what might happen if.. if the Italian elections do not go the way they want, if… if the scandals in the Spanish governing party to lead to the unraveling of all The Frau’s neat little plans, if…If things finally do blow up in Greece?

Oh well, never mind, we’ll deal with any of that if we get there. If not we won’t. Meanwhile who gives a damn about people going, hungry, mad suicidal, criminal, or even turning terrorist as a result of all this arrogant procrastinating?

Well hey ho and on it goes. After the inexplicable burst of euphoria on the markets, the rise in the value of the Euro, the conviction that Draghi* had done the trick with three words and no action, reality has smashed the rosy stoned image of what is really going on.

Not one of the serious problems and inherent imbalances of the Eurozone that are the root causes of the crises has been addressed. The banking union has been put on hold. The imbalances between the periphery and the centre are not even addressed. The Greek problem, which remains potentially explosive has been put on the back burner lest little Angie does not get her toy back.

But sweeping the rubbish under the carpet cannot work forever. Today the markets seem to have started waking up to the facts. The main one being that all this exclusive insistence on balancing budgets and slashing wages (alone) to achieve competitiveness has only resulted in one thing: the deepening and deterioration of the Eurocrisis.

Rampant, unacceptable and potentially destabilising  unemployment. Recession expanding throughout Europe. Debt rising as of course it is bound to under recessionary conditions and the like.

Greeks are being threatened with even more debilitating taxation which will only put the final nail in the coffin for the economy and may well lead to dangerous social unrest. Strikes everywhere from the farmers, to the seamen and the transport workers.

People who were complacent up to now, or who felt we might pull through, or preferred to look the other way until it was all over, are beginning to feel fear. The destructive, destabilising fear that that courageous man warned against. “You have nothing to fear but fear itself.” said Roosevelt.

Today’s midgets running the show do the exact opposite (as you would expect of them). They try to scare the wits out of the people to pass their idiotic, ineffective and indeed destructive policies.

And today we are told, the Minister was sent a bullet as a threat. This being Greece, the most likely explanation was not that he was being threatened by anyone, but simply another propaganda trick to arouse sympathy for him as he wields the hatchet destroying everything the Greeks worked hard to achieve. (While leaving in place the stuff nobody worked for but acquired by unfair to illegal means).

Quite frankly, I do not think anyone will give a brass farthing for this threat. The last thing it will arouse is sympathy. Possibly because the threat is hardly credible. Possibly because no one cares one way or another given the catastrophe looming ahead. After the German elections.

The Frau really should invite Samaras and Stournaras to her victory celebrations. It really will be mean minded of her if she does not.

*“Whatever it takes”

Who are these? Well who else! The brilliant technocrat economists! The ones setting the economy of the Eurozone right for instance. Those magnificent men… well, in their flying machines? You could describe them in such a way. After all they are completely up in the air.

They know what the problem is and they know how to solve it. The problem in Europe has too much debt and deficits that are far too large. What to do? Well, easy really. Reduce these two figures. Scale down the deficit and reduce debt. Those, after all are the problems of the economy.

So what do you do? Easy again. Well, only if you are a brilliant technocrat like Olli Rehn or Yannis Stournaras. The rest of us are too dim to really know what to do and how to do it. So we take out our big scissors and start cutting. The easy bits first. Pensions, salares, state expenses relating to welfare, you know hospitals, schools, universities or whatever else is really not necessary.

There now. If the state cuts its expenses like that, hey presto! No more deficits! But, hey wait a minute. That’s not enough. Well of course not. You have to tax far more to raise your revenue so that you can repay your debts, don’t you? Yes of course. Brilliant! Light bulb flashes in a cartoon cloud.

So you plunge into it viciously and start taxing everything, just about everything! And expect to raise revenue from those you have impoverished.

So why has none of this worked? Because our modern day wizards wear blinkers perhaps? Because they are too dim to realise that every action has a consequence? Because they are so far removed from reality that they do not realise public accounts amount to more than a cross word puzzle? Because people for them are nothing buts statistics?

Perhaps all of that and more. That they are blinded by a vicious inhuman economic dogma that forgets completely about the well being of the people because things like that do not matter to raw capitalist ideology.

In any case, for all their brilliance, the result of their policies has been an unmitigated disaster. Debt grows as a % of GDP and does not diminish when you plunge an economy into recession. When you savagely cut disposable income through cuts and too much taxation you destroy consumption, when you destroy consumption you send the economy into galloping recession.

Furthermore, you add problems to the economy in addition to making what you set out to achieve much worse. Problems such as an incredible rise in unemployment, unending recession, a rise in suicides, misery, hunger and much more.

In short, the achievements of our latter day wizards, aka Euro technocrats, can’t help reminding us of Phillip Larkin’s famous poem:

“They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
  They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
  And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
  By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
  And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
  It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
  And don’t have any kids yourself.”

And the last line is perhaps the crowning achievement of the brilliant technocrats like Stournaras. He has absolutely convinced us “have no kids!” How could you under his cast iron hand?

Mr Stournaras, the Greek Minister of Finances gave an interview to the BBC yesterday. He was extremely upbeat, declaring that there was almost no chance of a Grexit occurring any more and that recovery would begin in Greece in the last quarter of this year. He spoke of optimism in the market and claimed that they had managed to turn the economy around. All very bright and beautiful. 

However, Martin Koehring of The Economist Intelligence Unit isn’t convinced by the Greek finance minister’s claim that the risk of leaving the eurozone has almost vanished. Nor is he  convinced by Yannis Stournaras’s argument that the Athens government has turned the economy around, as the Guardian informs us. Nor are we.

And in this debilitating disastrous mess they have made of what used to an economy in Greece there is one feature no one bothers to concern themselves with at all, neither Mr Samaras in his pipe dreams of enormous investments rolling in from abroad at his behest, nor Mr Stournaras in his cocky presumptiveness. And that is, the severe brain drain from Greece.

Educated, able, intellectual, bright young people are leaving in droves because they cannot find jobs in this austerity driven recession, or even if they do, the pay they are offered simply is not worth their while. So when recovery does start, according to Mr Stournaras’ triumphalist claim that we shall start seeing recovery towards the end of the year, who will be there to provide the necessary driving force for the economy, for the country?

After five years of continual recession that has shrunk the economy by some 20% of GDP and counting, achieving an unemployment rate forecast by some to reach the dizzy heights of 30% this year, the Stournaras prediction of a recovery really does not amount to much. Some kind of anaemic recovery is bound to appear no matter how badly the economy is being handled. And it is. Being handled badly.

However, it will be a lopsided, handicapped recovery when we have lost our most valuable resource. Our educated and qualified young people who should be in the vanguard if recovery is to lead to real growth and a stable dynamic economy. They will not be there.

Some optimists say, Oh, they will come back! But will they? Mr Samaras and Mr Stournaras are very cocky in preening themselves that they have regained lost confidence in Greece. But whose confidence are they talking about? That of fickle, unstable markets perhaps? That of self serving politicians like Angela Merkel who is only interested in getting reelected and will do whatever it takes to achieve that admirable goal? Even pretending that the Samaras Stournaras duo have turned the Greek economy around?

But what of the confidence of the Greek people that the (mis)handling of this crisis has completely demolished? By the time recovery may start showing up timidly, our best and brightest will have established themselves abroad, with good salaries and better prospects. Some will have set up permanent homes, have had children and all the trappings that make a return even more difficult.

But beyond that, what incentives will they have to return to their home country, when confidence in Greek governments has been annihilated? Who will ever think seriously again for a very long time of buying their country’s government bonds to assure their savings? Hmmmm. Who will dare for a very long time to buy a house, or build one using savings acquired from their work abroad, when they know that whatever the situation might be at the time, the first thing any Greek government will do will be to slap enormous property taxes and other taxes on them?

Who will dare to bring their saving back at all? There simply is no confidence at all. And this loss cannot be regained easily or quickly. It is the kind of doubt and cautiousness passed down from father to son, mother to daughter. It will take a generation or two to overcome, and that only if the likes of Papandreou, Samaras, Stournaras, Venizelos and the like never appear on the Greek political scene again.

With all this empty talk about regaining competitiveness, why is this aspect not even hinted at?

Like a bad case of flue in winter the Davos shindig comes back every year. A lower key event than usual, they say, because… well damn! The pauperisation of such a large swathe of Europe has not lead to the ballooning of profits it was supposed to. In fact, sotto voce, it has led to the opposite. Not only that but car plants, for one, are closing down one after the other.

Mme Christine Lagarde (aka Marie Antoinette) gives an interview on a Greek TV channel. Of course she retains her exquisite poise, but what does she say? That well, er, um, even though the IMF itself maintains that the austerity prescription did not work we…. just have to keep at it. Under the simpleton’s belief that we might just get different results this time.

Will there be more cuts in pensions and salaries and more taxation? Well, there shouldn’t be if the rest of the programme is carried out properly. Omitting to say that the rest of the plan is impossible to carry out, properly or otherwise. Hey ho. But what about recovery? When will that come? Well, we have already achieved a tremendous amount in that direction by slashing income… I mean reducing labour costs of course. And that is what will bring about investments and growth!

Hmmm. Why has the opposite of that happened then? No investments and galloping unemployment? Well, you know you have to get the structural reforms going and… Same old, same old beat of the drum with platitudes, and reiterations of a theory that does not apply and… well yes I did say I care less about Greek children going hungry than those of the Niger!  But in the Niger they are going hungrier…

And then Portugal. The star performer of the bailouts. It actually sold long term bonds on the market at a reasonable interest rate. Hurray! Ok. But then why has it been decided that it needs a new bailout because this, well, does not really mean anything? Same old same old. No matter what you do, you’re f…ked.

And what about Britain and the dynamic duo Cameron and Osborne? Their policy has proved disastrous. The economy is shrinking. They’re in for a triple dip and all that. Do they realise that perhaps they need a drastic change of direction? Not a bit of it. We shall carry on with more of the same for several more years and then it will be all right. They say.

And damn you, if it isn’t we shall call for a referendum on whether to stay in the EU! You’d like that wouldn’t you?

In Greece a promising strike fizzles out. Not to worry, no one will get paid anything any more. They will only continue to be taxed. Because, the government says, regardless of whether it is true or not, that is what the troika wants. And what the troika wants the troika gets.

And the beat goes on. And on. And on. The same tedious beat leading no one anywhere. Or rather leading us all down into the black hole of their making.

The trouble with living in historically exciting times is that… well it doesn’t really feel like it. Just a heavy droning. A dead beat. Incessant inanities being spewed out by narcissistic nonentities who fancy themselves and think they know because they stick to the manual even though it is completely obsolete. Besides they remain totally out of touch with what their inanities have provoked. A bit like Marie Antoinette. Though she poor dear, was not responsible for the destructive policy, as our current little lot obviously are.

Of course I am referring to the luminaries gathered at Davos. Larry Elliot has a brilliant piece on the state of play there in the Guardian. A few interesting points come up. First of all, that what we could call the representatives of the notorious 1% sucking up all the wealth out of the rest of the world, do not share the European officials and politicians buoyancy of the worse of the crisis being over.

I suppose that lot can be excused for wild statements like that. As they have grandly demonstrated throughout the Euro crisis, they haven’t a clue how the economy works. Yet do the Davos bunch know any better? Perhaps not. As Larry Elliot points out:

“But the dilemma for the CEOs gathered in Davos is that the policies they have championed in the past ? fiscal austerity, weaker trade unions, aggressive cost cutting ? have hammered consumer spending.”

Which they obviously did not expect to happen! Yet if they had a modicum of common sense, would it be hard for them to realise that that is precisely what happens. The more you squeeze income and cut benefits to increase your profits, the less your customer has to spend. The less he has to spend, the less he buys and your profits simply do not materialise.

Anyway, Karl Marx did point this out over a hundred years ago, as one of the contradictions of capitalism, did he not? And okay, you can’t expect gung ho business CEOs to read terribly subversive books like that, now can you? And the neo liberal dogma thinks Keynes is just as bad.

How about homely proverbs and fairy stories then? When you slaughter the chicken that lays the golden eggs you lose everything. Don’t you? But perhaps all these macho CEOs are not allowed to read fairy tales to their kids either.

Still if they started screaming that this debilitating austerity must be stopped before we all die, then perhaps the best and greatest of Europe, that is Frau Merkel, might listen. Well, it was listening to the bankers alone that got us into this state in the first place. Perhaps a few industrial producers might help turn her head this time.

After all, it does seem from Davos, that the penny has finally dropped. Their workers are also their customers. So if you squeeze them dry, still worse snigger with pleasure as more and more of them are thrown onto the dole because that will enable you to cut wages even further (hurray!), you’re not going to be selling much despite having achieved greater profit margins in theory. Are you?

Meanwhile although this great big devastating crisis was created in the first place to save the banks, it is finally dawning on all our luminaries that, oh dear, by squeezing the people to save the banks, through cuts in wages, pensions, welfare and over taxation… whoops! Deposits have dwindled! People will not borrow, and… Yes. That hasn’t worked the way they wanted either.

So as Larry Elliot concludes:

“Three things would help: fixing the banks, a reining back of austerity and a new social compact to ensure that productivity gains are once again shared by capital and labour.”  (My bold print)

Amen to that!

Well what do you know? Except that it is pretty useless. Greece has been told that she will not be obliged to take even further measures for six months, to give her time to effect all the necessary reforms that remain outstanding. That is just about all of them, barring labour relations, where labour rights have already been abolished. But that is the only “reform” that has been put into affect).

Of course, the really horrendous taxation measures, which will reduce every last honest Greek to pauperdom, combined with additional slashes in pensions and public sector salaries, have already been voted in, so why the big fuss? What is so great about this hollow would be moratorium since a large spate of horrendous measures have been taken already?

Well, just another admission that all these crazy plans are expected to fail. That they all know perfectly well that all targets set will be missed. Because the only reason why any further measures would be automatically taken would be in the case when targets were missed. And our PM and his side kick of a Minister of Finances have kept reassuring that this won’t happen if….

If everything we have agreed to is carried out (like collecting over 2.5 billion more in taxation from a moribund economy in deep recession, aka depression).

And precisely because they all know very well that the targets will not be met, but nobody wants to upset little Angie in her bid to cling on to power, the six month moratorium has been expressly designed to paper over the cracks they all know will appear, till the German election is safely over.

After that? What then? Who knows? All that matters now is how to keep kicking that damned can down the bloody road! And let those going cold and hungry in Greece eat cake if they must.

Speaking about the prospects for Greece on Greek TV, Christine Lagarde, IMF Chief, (aka Marie Antoinette) sounded rather too upbeat when she said the following:

Our analysis is that if the structural reforms are conducted and therefore if there is a proper transmission of the salary cost reduction into prices, no additional cost reduction or pension reduction will be needed.

If, however, the structural reforms were not to take place, if the closed professions were to maintain their privilege, if the multiple licenses, bureaucratic hurdles and impediments to growth were to stay, then we would face another situation where the fiscal deficit needs to be tackled and therefore more cuts would be needed.

Now of all these why has nothing at all happened three years in to the crisis and three years of direct troika involvement? And how far is any of it likely to be seriously undertaken by the present Samaras regime which has proved just as incompetent, just as self serving and just as corrupt as the previous ones? Corruption, in fact, we are told has even increased.

As to the lethal corruption engendering, growth prohibitive bureaucracy, it is common knowledge that the parties supporting the government, share the spoils on a 5,3,2 basis. That is positions are filled NOT by the best and brightest as you would expect under the siege conditions Greece is living in, but 5 for Samaras’ party, 3 for Venizelos PASOK party and 2 for Kouvellis so called Democratic Left party (which has proved neither democratic nor left.)

The current government is bending over backwards so that its clients of the public sector will not be touched. Neither are firings contemplated, nor, which is worse, is any real modernization or stream lining of public sector services even mentioned, lest its should upset all those party appointees who get rich on the kick backs this regime engenders.

And as to “salary cost reduction being properly transmitted to prices”… Well now, does she STILL not know that the factors reducing productivity and maintaining prices exorbitantly high have very little to do with the already slashed cost of labour? Does she not know that under the troika’s guidance the financial costs for businesses have gone up exponentially? The exorbitant levels of taxation on everything from fuel to milk have caused production and transportation costs to soar on the one hand, and shelf prices to rise on the other.

If she doesn’t, then she isn’t much good for the job now is she? If she does (as one would expect) then who is she trying to kid? Herself? The other members of the IMF? The Greeks? (But they are beyond kidding and totally insignificant anyway) Or is it just that she too is in on the scam. Nothing must budge, nothing must flutter till Angela Merkel gets re elected Chancellor!

Which is why not only she but also our own Minister of Finances are trying to make positive noises about how things will start going well AFTER The Frau has been safely elected.

When they do not, then we know the mantra, and the actual cause of course. It is all the fault of the Greek government for not having put serious reforms into effect. Which they can be relied upon not to do. But then doesn’t Christine know that too? It would come as quite a surprise if she didn’t.

“Europe’s plans for banking union are coming unstuck before they’re even agreed, according to the Wall Street Journal  this afternoon.”

Why does that not come as a surprise? Possibly because the current German Chancellor gives the impression that all she wants is to cling onto power at any cost and has therefore browbeaten the whole of the European Union to put everything on hold till she clinches the election.

She has also made us feel that she really does not want a banking union at all. And only agreed to discus it to gain time for her own personal benefit. She wants nothing that might compromise Germany’s narrow interests as she and Rossler perceive them. This, however, hardly goes any way to reassuring that Germany’s broader interests will be met, but unfortunately this is the trap Europe is currently caught in. Narrow national self interests that can no longer see the big picture.

There is, however, one voice today that does provide some reassurance. The Finnish PM’s comment over the need for Britain to stay in Europe. The EU without England, he says would be like Fish without the Chips! And he is right. To stay together and constitute a force and a presence on the global scene, the European Union should not be allowed to fall apart. And it’s not just a question of the fish staying with the chips!

However, what we are seeing at the moment are narrow minded centrifugal tendencies. Cameron is playing to the Europhobes, out of fear of the Ukip rise and possible loss of the hard line right of his party. Therefore he plays the populist card of the referendum for Brexit. A game that could possibly get out of hand and cause a big blow to European Unity.

The Frau is so immersed in her tactical maneuvers to ensure her reelection that she cannot see the wood from the trees (if ever she could). She wants to keep taking without ever giving. Her populism will no doubt ensure her reelection, but it will also ensure even worse conditions in the EU with recession spreading to Germany too, and the whole endeavor risks being put in danger through narrow minded self interest.

As to the peripheral states, the inhuman stringent austerity that has been imposed has achieved one major result. The unprecedented and dangerous rise in unemployment. The suffering imposed on the people without any tangible result, that is without any tangible positive results but plenty of negative ones, makes them ripe for populist rhetoric.

The EU is no longer perceived as one entity. It is already at risk of disintegrating into its original parts. Hate and distrust between the peoples’ is rife, as it is being fanned by the above mentioned populists and others. Governments are deaf and blind to what is really going on. Yet the EU is so much greater than the sum of its parts, with the potential to make the difference globally.

It is more than a pity that it is now in the hands of miserable nonentities of low stature who cannot see further than their individual noses.

It appears that after the 2014 European Parliamentary Elections, the next President of the Commission will be elected by the European Parliament, and not appointed by the powers that be, who prefer nonentities for obvious self serving reasons.

This is indeed a step in the right direction. However, will it be enough and will it be in time to keep the European project going?