Larry Elliot has an extremely interesting article in the Guardian today on the German economy. He describes how the economy has slowed down and that its growth is slumping. The the recession in the Eurozone has also hit German exports hard.

Greece has been chastised and vilified and sent through hell for the sin of consuming too much, not producing nearly enough and living beyond its means. On the other hand Germany’s woes derive from just the opposite. Its economy has relied on exports and investment, to the detriment of domestic consumption. In other words it produces far more than it can possibly consume.

And that’s not good either? Well, says Larry Elliot “Take away exports and investment and there is not a lot to sustain German growth.”  So what do we do? Greece is all wrong and Germany is all wrong too? Well no. What is wrong is rigid unimaginative thinking over the economy. The German obsession with viewing the economy as a morality play.

A morality play, mind you, where everybody else is sinful and only Germany is virtuous. Which is the usual approach of bigots. So in this vein of superior morality having to punish delinquents, it managed to impose through its clout on the one hand and through the utter insipidness and ineffectiveness of the European leadership on the other, a policy of debilitating austerity with absolutely no provision for growth whatsoever.

As a result it shot itself in the foot and lost its best customers. That is Europe. So the problem is not that there is one and only economic policy that must be followed by everybody, as the pea brained German government has decided. The problem is one of balance. And having said that I hasten to qualify it. The economy is a problem of common sense.

If you squeeze an economy to death (such as the Greek economy) you have not helped it recover. You have ruined it. And by ruining the economy of your customers you end up hanging yourself with the same rope. What is needed is imagination, an open mind, a refocusing of what is really important, that is realising that the purpose of an economy is to provide a good life, for the peoples, not just the 1% milking the system now.

Of course Greece should improve its production and rely less on imports. But then so should Germany concentrate on improving domestic consumption and cutting down her reliance on exports. There is need for austerity in economies, but not the German version which throws everything out of kilter.

As Larry Elliot says: “…it would be preferable ? for German citizens, for the eurozone and for the rest of the world ? if consumer spending and domestic investment constituted a bigger slug of  [the expected future] growth [of Germany]. For that to happen, though, there would need to be a change in the way Germany thinks about economics and its role in the world, and that looks some way off.”

Which is the main, if not the major problem for Europe and the global economy.

Well, the signs are not very promising. A bill from the Ministry of Finances supposed to contain extra taxation of luxury items (like middle sized cars) and strong punishment for tax evaders and a motley muddle of all sorts of other things, is being pulled back and forth. It has been submitted to Parliament where it MUST be voted, as has become tiresome by now, under urgency rules (meaning hardly any debate) to meet the prerequisites for the next tranche. Same old same old.

And in the same old same old way it is obvious that no one in government from the Minister to Ministry personnel, has done much thinking about what they want to pass. Clauses are being pulled out at the last minute to be changed or omitted. Other clauses are rushed in. In short a shambles of shoddy work. Not to mention some kind of tax on yachts entering Greek waters.

This to catch the nasty Greek tax dodgers! Hah! Gotcha! Hmmm… I don’t suppose it will do the high class marine tourism we are so desperate for though. Will it? Like the other problem. Liquidity. For banks to be able to loan again, the recapitalisation is not enough. Deposits in banks will have to grow. Moneys sent abroad must be enticed back, since in the deep and continuing recession we are in, newly generated income being deposited is very unlikely.

Government solution? Raise tax on interest earned and threaten to confiscate moneys from bank accounts if you owe the tax authorities over 500 Euro. Given that people who simply cannot pay the exorbitant taxation being so carelessly (not to so inhumanly) imposed, is it likely that anyone with small savings will leave their money in the bank?

And there are so many things like that. Slip shod work. On the cuff. Laws not thought out at all. Laws that will create further problems rather than solve anything.

It looks as though the whole government is in a blind panic. This conclusion is further corroborated by the government’s reaction to the terrorist attacks on journalists and government targets. (Thankfully bloodless so far.) Shrill shrieks with the sole intention of trying to blame the opposition SYRIZA party for all of these. Directly. Giving rise to suspicions that they may even be the ones behind all this merely to divert attention from their horrible, dangerous mishandling of government and to discredit a party they fear might win the next elections.

In any case, whatever is behind all this, what is obvious is that the government has lost its cool and is caught up in a raging panic.

None of this augers at all well for the future of this country.

In his meeting with Alexis Tsipras, Wolfgang Schauble is reported to have said that nothing can change in the Greek policy and that if Greece does not fulfill all the demands of the Memorandum, Greece cannot stay in the Eurozone. Well, he would say that wouldn’t he? Especially to that young upstart Tsipras.

Nevertheless, perhaps Mr Samaras should stop to listen and stop the vacuous boast that a Grexit is no longer on the cards. He should also perhaps stop to think that all this amateur shilly shallying and about turns are not, after all, conducive to solving the Greek problems but, instead are exacerbating them.

Perhaps he should also stop to wonder why it was big bad Schauble accepted Tsipras’ request to meet with him. If his government (Samaras’) is in no immediate danger of falling apart, perhaps Schauble would not have bothered with such a meeting. Why should he, when he has Stournaras almost literally licking his boots?

Then again perhaps Samaras has stopped to think about it. Not how to fix the economy. No. He leaves all that to anything the troika might get into their heads. But he may be thinking about the threat to his maintaining power from Syriza, a threat enhanced perhaps by Schauble’s willingness to meet with him, a threat he is trying to deal with by demonizing SYRIZA as a terrorist organisation.

But his government’s protests are so shrill and so obvious, that it may well be he feels power slipping out of his hands like water through a sieve, and can see no other way of clinging on to it.

Drawing up a serious, workable plan to start pulling Greece out of the crisis has proved far too much for him. He imagined sucking up to Merkel would have been quite enough. Well, it isn’t.

Are we at a crossroads? Is the crisis over? As many officials from Barroso to Draghi are saying and hinting respectively? Today’s picture tends to show optimism. An optimism reiterated in Greece. In a somewhat hollow and, I would say dangerous way. Hollow, because how can the government be so up beat when it knows that the country is not only not coming out of the crisis, but set to enter the worse possible phase of it yet with rising unemployment, deeper recession and a populace pushed just about beyond all endurance. With no remedy in sight.

Dangerous, because all these up beat statements of, recovery will start in the second half, there will be no more measures, we have ensured Greece will not be kicked out of the Euro, are not only very far from the certainty with which the government expresses them, but more than likely not to be born out. (Even the avoidance of Grexit, should everything else go badly wrong, as well it might.)

The hope is that despite the government’s poor performance and even worse propaganda, things might just not go so terribly wrong, after all. But even so, the high optimism and triumphant statements of having saved us yet again will lead to far greater resentment and possible social upheaval, when things do not go as fantasized by the government, than if the statements had remained low key and cautious.

Nevertheless, today Europe looks so much better, in terms of lower borrowing costs for the danger states, in terms of the Euro parity rate rising and… well, not much more. Take unemployment figures for instance. Thing is the whole Euro project never takes unemployment figures into account. They don’t seem to matter. So in the Brussels/Berlin axis view, things are going really well. You see, inflation remains low. Which is the ONLY thing that matters to Germany, hence the only thing that matters to the puppets in the Commission and elsewhere.

However, Alice Ross has tweeted a warning: “Every new wave of the euro-zone debt crisis began after sustained rallies for the euro.”

It remains to be seen whether this will be born out.

There are very many reasons why Europe should stick together and not unravel. But there are many reasons why this is now in danger. And the main danger seems to be that not one of the members has any notion, concern, still less real commitment to “Europe”.

At the moment we have regressed into individual nation states, looking after their own narrow interests to the detriment of the broader European interest. Where national hatreds have flared up, where all that matters is the figures, where the people can just go to hell as far as European leadership is concerned (and that includes, perhaps more than others, the current Greek government).

Will the peoples of Europe rise to the challenge and maintain and improves what they have started, despite current leadership, or will they be too weak and too dispensable to make any difference?

ECB unveils new ?5 note

Mario Draghi has officially unveiled the new ?5 note. It boasts a photo of the ancient Greek goddess Europa, and will come into circulation on May 2*

Aha! Is this a coded sign that Greece is to remain in the Euro after all?

If not, they better be careful. Greek Goddesses are known for a vindictive streak if they are crossed.

So watch it guys. All of you. Greek incompetents included.

As being reported today:

“Handelsblatt is reporting that eurozone finance ministers are refusing to sign off the deal until elections have taken place next month, at which point the communist president, Demetris Christofias, will have departed.”

The deal is the bailout for Cyprus. The Eurozone finance ministers have also stated misgivings over this particular bailout because Cypriot banks have, apparently, a large amount of Russian funds, and we don’t want to bail out bad Russian mafia types.

No, only bad European mafia types qualify I suppose.

So, the Eurozone concept of democracy is becoming clearer and clearer. First it is a question of intervening in the elections and referenda held by another country. Ireland, Greece, now Italy. Through threats and bullying the electorates are cowed into voting for what the Brussels/Berlin axis wants. As became particularly obvious in the Greek elections.

Though Samaras’ party only got 18% of the vote the first time around, which was the genuine feeling of the electorate, after out right meddling and threats of disaster, this went up to around 30% in the second elections. The vote of the oldies terrified that they would lose their pensions.

The irony is that they did lose their pensions anyway.

Now the Eurozone has progressed. No deal guys at all till your elections. And you can’t vote that Commie in again whatever you do! In other words, vote for the guy we want for us to consider bailing you out. And then again, we have those awful ruskies to consider.

I suppose in Euro newspeak this would be termed a necessary reform of democracy.

Today, Antonis Samaras declared in Berlin that “the glass is half full”, that reforms in Greece are proceeding apace. Yannis Stournaras, the Minister of Finances has also declared that the first signs of recovery will appear in the second half of this year.

So is this the cause of hope I am referring to? Well, no… Not at all. How could it be when:

Today’s Eurostat figures show that unemployment in Greece has risen to 26%, just 0.6% lower than Spain and that youth unemployment is the highest in the Eurozone at 57.6%. Stournaras’ own budget was based on a forecast of further recession in 2013 of 4.5%. (And that, as we know all too well, is optimistic.) And the debilitating contraction measures to suck a further 10 billion or so out of the economy this year, that Samaras and Stournaras are so proud of because Wolfgang Schauble and Angela Merkel gave them a pat on the head for them, have not even started to kick in yet.

Christos Yannaras, a revered Professor of Philosophy at the University of Athens, has said (and I paraphrase) that these statements from our politicians are either all nothing but empty tricks and ruses to maintain their grip on power, (a kind of smoke screen or playing with mirrors) or else our politicians are totally cut off from reality, one could say in compete denial, which is a pathological condition. Either way, this is not a sustainable situation.

Coming to Samaras’ boast of reforms. The only “reform” that has been achieved in Greece is the dismantling of labour laws designed to protect the labour force, hand in hand with the necessary slash in wages. What the neo liberals like to call a “flexible” labour market has indeed been achieved. The result? Even greater unemployment, forecast to rise to catastrophic proportions of 30%. (Not taking into account the high number of emigrants.)

Now there may perhaps be something positive in this wanton devastation of the Greek economy and Greek society. And that is that the Greek people are becoming more and more acutely aware of what Greece’s fundamental problem really is. It is not the economy. It is not the debt. It is the corrupt and decaying political structure that has grown like a cancer.

It is a Constitution designed to exempt and exonerate all those wielding power. It is a system designed to provide maximum perks to those in power and their hangers on at a maximum cost to the ordinary, honest, law abiding individual. It is the judicial system which is equally corrupt and known for passing judgement on the basis of kick backs rather than evidence.

In other words the whole structure is rotten. The reform of this rotten structure is not even contemplated by the narcissistic Samaras who can see no further than his image in the mirror. An image that is more in his possibly demented mind, than actually in the mirror, in that it bears absolutely to relation to reality.

I have saved the country! he declares as the bumper tranche of billions of Euro was released. Does he not even realise that the cost of getting this tranche released is the complete and utter devastation of not only the Greek economy but of Greek society as a whole? It would appear not.

And now we have the infamous Papaconstantinou/Venizelos scandal* of how they shielded possible tax dodgers on the Lagarde List while mercilessly imposing impossible taxation on the Greek people. (An act Stournaras has out done them both in.)

Papaconstantinou whines “I will not be scapegoated for all the ills of the post junta period!” That is, all the corruption and rot that has ballooned into a terminal cancerous growth over the past 30 years. To his “credit” he does not dispute this, merely states the obvious. That he is not the only one responsible for this (undisputed) rotten state of affairs.

Venizelos and his coterie are in a blind panic, refusing to address the issue, blaming the opposition for trying to undermine the government and hopelessly, helplessly clinging onto power.

Kouvelis, the leader of what used to be a left wing party has also succumbed to pressure, pressure from Samaras and Venizelos but also pressure from his own young acolytes eager and desperate to cling onto power, and unequivocally supports Venizilos, summarily expelling honest members of his own party for daring to rock the boat and potentially deprive them of power. Power for its own sake. Power to serve the interests of a select few who hope to become Ministers and officials and so on.

I should have my head examined for considering this a positive development. A cause for some hope. But since all we have left to cling on to here in Greece is straws, there is scope for considering that we may be witnessing the beginning of the collapse of this rotten regime oppressing us here. When thieves turn against each other it is when they lose.

*For greater detail and more analysis of the deep corruption of the Greek state see Kosta Vaxevanis’ article in the NYT.

Effectively. In their infinite wisdom the forces behind the troika decided to squeeze Greece until the pips squeaked because it had become over indebted and insolvent.

The stringent austerity has brought about a collapse of the Greek economy, plunging the country into Depression conditions and growing unemployment (by some expected to reach 30% this year).

Nevertheless the Samaras’ “teachers’ pet” government has pledged to increase revenue by at least another 2 billion or so. In a shrinking economy, while shielding tax evaders and above all shielding those shielding tax evaders such as Vangelis Venizelos. Who, coincidentally, is leader of one of the parties supporting the Samaras government so it is therefore expedient to shield him.

Now, in their brilliance, in order to raise revenue they have slapped an exorbitant tax on heating fuel. In plane English (and simple economics of which it appears they are incapable) they have priced heating fuel (and natural gas, if with a slightly lesser tax) out of the market. As a result, people have turned to open fires, log stoves and such, burning whatever they can get their hands on so as not to freeze.

This, surprise surprise has led to a growing pollution problem, producing smog and such. At the same time, revenue from fuel consumption has collapsed since no one can afford it any more. So not only has the object of the exercise failed (increased revenue) but a further severe pollution/health problem has been created.

The simple answer would be, reduce the tax significantly and thereby collect far more in taxes than you are now and deal with the pollution problem. Not to mention allowing people to heat themselves. But no. No. here too the Samaras regime follows European practice. Which is:

Never admit you have been wrong about anything! And never try to repair the damage you have done.

So Mr Stournaras refuses to budge on the hefty tax, because, he says “it is a memorandum obligation” and we cannot jeopardize the credibility we have gained (!) (exclamation mark on two counts: what credibility do they imagine they have gained and with whom? and the memorandum obligation he is referring to is designed to raise revenue, I would imagine, and not per se to ruin the health and jeopardize the lives of the people.)

Oh, and since the pollution is becoming very dangerous, the government has suggested that perhaps they should ban open fires and such to contain it. In other words deprive the population of all and any means of heating.

Now Greece has a very benign climate. Which is one of the reasons analysts through the ages have said, why philosophy flourished there. Nevertheless, winter does bring the cold and the snows and the sleet with it. Not for as long as in northern Europe perhaps, but long enough for people to suffer and die from the cold.

We are entering zero and sub zero temperatures at the moment, and being scolded by those in power for burning anything we can find to keep warm. But not for a moment are they even considering the obvious. Lower the consumption tax on fuel.

So since it is quite obvious that this measure is not only not raising tax revenue, but actually slashing such revenue from what it would have been with a lower tax rate, and also causing added acute pain and suffering on the populace, why is the Samaras/Stournaras regime insisting on it?

The only thing this achieves is depriving Greeks of one more human right. The right to keep warm and healthy in winter. The right to work has been abolished. The right to fair pay has been abolished. The right to health care has been abolished. The right to education is also being abolished. So now we are on to abolishing the basic necessities of food and heating.

Had such pain been inflicted on a an African or Asian country, and so wantonly, with such malice and obvious desire to cause pain and suffering rather than achieve anything else by it, the whole of the so called civilized world would have been up in arms over it.

Now, not only does no one in the so called civilized world gives a hoot over this human tragedy, but the Greeks are being continually scolded and vilified over it. So called economists (not real ones) churn out all sorts of nonsense why this policy should be continued (till the Greek population has been decimated and reduced to pauper status perhaps?) and the Samaras regime preens itself that it has regained “credibility” and god forbid that we should risk losing it again! (Stournaras).

“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” *

Will heads really have to roll before sense and a modicum of the humanity Europe used to pride itself for is restored?

*- Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1.4.90), Marcellus to Horatio

In that brilliant work by Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, there is a scene in Chapter 3 where a problem has to be solved. Alice and the various animals have got soaking wet after falling into a large pool created by Alice’s tears. The problem they have to solve is how to get dry. And the debate goes like this:

‘Ahem!’ said the Mouse with an important air, ‘are you all ready? This is the driest thing I know. Silence all round, if you please! “William the Conqueror, whose cause was favoured by the pope, was soon submitted to by the English, who wanted leaders, and had been of late much accustomed to usurpation and conquest. Edwin and Morcar, the earls of Mercia and Northumbria- -“‘

‘Ugh!’ said the Lory, with a shiver.

‘I beg your pardon!’ said the Mouse, frowning, but very politely: ‘Did you speak?’

‘Not I!’ said the Lory hastily.

‘I thought you did,’ said the Mouse. ‘ ? I proceed. “Edwin and Morcar, the earls of Mercia and Northumbria, declared for him: and even Stigand, the patriotic archbishop of Canterbury, found it advisable ? “‘

‘Found what?’ said the Duck.

‘Found it,’ the Mouse replied rather crossly: ‘of course you know what “it” means.’

‘I know what “it” means well enough, when I find a thing,’ said the Duck: ‘it’s generally a frog or a worm. The question is, what did the archbishop find?’

The Mouse did not notice this question, but hurriedly went on, ‘” ? found it advisable to go with Edgar Atheling to meet William and offer him the crown. William’s conduct at first was moderate. But the insolence of his Normans ? ” How are you getting on now, my dear?’ it continued, turning to Alice as it spoke.

‘As wet as ever,’ said Alice in a melancholy tone: ‘it doesn’t seem to dry me at all.’

‘In that case,’ said the Dodo solemnly, rising to its feet, ‘I move that the meeting adjourn, for the immediate adoption of more energetic remedies ? ‘

‘Speak English!’ said the Eaglet. ‘I don’t know the meaning of half those long words, and, what’s more, I don’t believe you do either!’ And the Eaglet bent down its head to hide a smile: some of the other birds tittered audibly.

And this, dear readers, is exactly how the debates in the European Summits and the Eurogroup sound. Total irrelevance, misplaced pomposity, and, of course, they never get anywhere! For Mouse read whichever dignitary is taking the chair, either Barroso or Merkel will do, but all the others sound the same. And for the Dodo read Herman Van Rompuy. There is no mistake there.

The only trouble with the European Summit debates is that we have yet to find an Eaglet among them. Because the eaglet is the only one who is right. Not only does nobody have a clue what you are trying to say, but you yourself have no idea either!

Thank you Lewis Carroll, for helping us understand… not how the European Summits work, but why the do not.

At the very last moment! The nail biting thriller resolved. Obama did it! Danger of Fiscal Cliff resolved. Congress also agrees to plan to avoid the disaster. Stock Markets all over the world go up! Thank God! We have been saved!

Now just what is it that the whole world has been saved from? America falling over the Fiscal Cliff of course! And what does that mean? That if an agreement had not been reached at exactly the eleventh hour, then the US Economy would have been obliged to go into austerity automatically. It would have had to make slashing cuts and raise taxes all around.

And why would that have mattered? Because the US Economy would have been plunged, by that very policy, into recession and this recession would have been catastrophic for the global economy.

Oh, I see. In other words the US Economy would have gone the way of the Merkel variation of the infamous There Is No Alternative. The US would have been obliged to apply exactly the same policy that the Brussels – Berlin Axis is imposing all over Europe. Maintaining that this is the only way to put the economy back on track.

Hmmm. So what the hell is going on then? The Markets cheer and go up because the US avoided at the very last minute, a policy that would have been so destructive that the whole world trembled at the prospect. While in Europe countries are cajoled and threatened that if they do not follow that very same policy the US avoided then The Markets won’t like it.

Nevertheless, despite the schizophrenia of The Markets, it is an undeniable fact that the Merkel imposed policy of stringent and relentless austerity has produced a very dangerous result. Recession over the whole of the Eurozone and beyond in the whole of Europe, high and growing unemployment, misery, indifference to human well being and even life.

So if the whole world could see just what this Fiscal Cliff would have meant for the global Economy, why is Germany let off scot free for destroying the European Economy with the enormous repercussions this has had and is having on the global economy too?

Well, as can be expected this secret Brussels-Berlin axis speech writer lacks imagination just about as badly as the Brussels – Berlin axis policy makers.

Here in Greece we are becoming rather weary of the same old lame deceitful cant being repeated again and again. Now we can’t help emitting a dry little laugh when we hear exactly the same lines from other puppet governments of the Eurozone states under assault from the Brussels-Berlin axis.

The first of the puppets was George Papandreou, who, being the first tended, in the beginning to get the benefit of the doubt. So when he first triumphantly  boasted that he had “saved” Greece, some actually believed him, others just shrugged a suspicious “we shall see.”

However this “saviour” cant is the first of the Brussels -Berlin axis cants. Exactly when some puppet Quisling has agreed to outrageous terms that incur recession at best, rampant unemployment and a total collapse of the economy, then he addresses his people (like a Roman Emperor) in triumph, proclaiming he has “saved” the country.

Now, in Greece, these disgraceful technocrat politicians, from Papandreou, through Papademos to Venizelos and now the notorious for his dishonesty Samaras, have all proclaimed in arrogant boastfulness that they have “saved” the country. This has happened so many times now, and each time the accompanying terms have incurred such destruction and wretchedness that we would somehow prefer never to have been saved at all in the first place. After all, what would not having been saved entail then?

And precisely when the country gets to that line of opinion, of “just how worse could it have been if no one had ‘saved’ us?” The unimaginative Brussels-Berlin axis speech writers realise they must churn out a back up motive. This one is a variation of “So you think it is bad now? You just don’t know how much worse it would have been without this kind of saving.”

Again the first (and perhaps worst) offender was to be found, where else? In Greece. In the form of the super duper technocrat Papademos who had come in to save us (yes) and vote in the disastrous PSI and further shrinking of the economy and explosion of unemployment.

Now this gentleman lost every claim to any kind of decency from human, to political, even to technocratic decency, when he sternly and in a threatening manner pronounced over the TV and airwaves that: You will go hungry! You will have no fuel! There will be no milk on the shelves in the super market! If we do not vote in these catastrophic measures.

And then, after this disreputable little agreement had gone through and had indeed only managed to make things much worse than before, (as all sane minded people knew it would) the new technocrat wonder boy Yannis Stournaras, again declared several months later, exactly the same thing. Using exactly the same words. “There will be no milk on the shelves in the super markets!” if we don’t shrink the economy by a further 18 billion Euro or so.

But before you sigh and say, what do you expect from all these inept Greeks, take a look at the statements going round now. Mario Monti, the darling of the troika (as it were) has just pronounced that he has been the “saviour” of Italy and that, oh yes, I forgot that one. The sacrifices of the Italian people must not be allowed to go to waste!

That little line hacked in Berlin was originally used by Samaras. We will not let the sacrifices of the Greek people go to waste! They forget to add. Instead we shall lay the Greek (Italian, Spanish, Irish etc) people to waste! And be very proud of that too!

And guess who has trotted up onto the stage to repeat the same cliched line coined by this horribly unimaginative Brussels-Berlin speech writer? Mariano Rajoy! The Spanish economy is in a complete shambles, high sky unemployment and growing recession even though Spain’s fiscal conditions and state finances were in a much better state than those of Germany.

Nevertheless he too jumped on the Brussels-Berlin axis band wagon to ruin his country’s economy and now he tells the Spanish people a sort of “you don’t know how lucky you are we have done this to you.” because “things would have been far worse had we not plunged you into recession and unemployment!”

All the Brussels-Berlin axis speech writers have achieved by this unimaginative and lazy exhibition is the following: There is one center and one center only deciding not only on the infliction of pain and ruin on the Eurozone states, but also on who is to do it and what they are to say in justification. And woe betide him who refuses to do as he or she is told.

And through all this brilliant politicking and diplomacy it has made a vast majority of victims in the worse hit states scream:

We don’t want to be saved! We don’t want to be saved any more by anyone else ever again, and certainly not by the likes of you Berlin groveling little lot! We don’t want you to make sure our sacrifices are not going to waste! Not the way you mean it!

Just leave us alone! Stop saving us and let us all go to hell! And then we shall see how much worse what you are doing to us really is. Worse even than hell. Because the hell you have inflicted on us  derives from your extreme neo liberal dogma where all you want to achieve is the crushing of people, the abolition of society and to turn human beings into frightened, hungry and hence compliant vassals.

And actually, the same lines repeated by every Quisling PM from Samaras to Mario Monti, under the same circumstances each time, followed by the same appalling consequences, have helped more and more people see through your deceptive lies. But that’s just it. One of the things The Frau and her coterie are greatly lacking in is imagination, both in economic policy and propaganda.