Many many years ago, way back in the dark ages, Democracy used to be defined as government by the people, of the people for the people. A very quaint idea indeed and something totally unrelated to today’s European Union which consists of: government by unelected unaccountable Eurocrats, for the bankers and the very few, of the most servile, insignificant unimaginative nonentities that money can buy.

The funny bit here is that this is not some cynical witticism but an accurate description of how Europe is being run.

For many years now it has been an established fact that within Europe referenda will not count unless and until the electorate vote for the results the Bungling Bureaucrats want. However, this axiom has been refined. Now elections have been scrapped altogether and reduced to a rule not unlike Henry Ford’s dictum referring to his cars: “You can have any colour you want as long as it’s black.” The Euro dictum is not quite: you can have whatever government you want as long as they do as we say, but even worse: you will vote in the government that will do as we say or be driven to more elections till you do or, now, even better, a series of Palace Coups till we get the right fawning subservient Prime Minister we want.

The perfect example for how this latter works is Italy. President Napolitano has grossly overstepped his mandate fist with the coup that put Mario Monti in power and now with the Renzi farce. After assuring and promising he would not take power without an election Renzi does just that through not least Napolitano’s machinations. And lest something go awry, it has been stated that there will be no new elections because…. well, ah, you know, we have to change our electoral laws first.

And to add insult to injury, the very idea of National Self Determination has also been scrapped. National self determination? What utter nonsense! That won’t do! That won’t do at all. It will make our grip on power through unelected idiots so much more difficult to maintain!

So out comes Baroso of all nonentities and threatens the upstart Scots that should they dare vote for independence they will be kicked out of the European Union and not allowed back in! This is based on nothing in law or even logic. It is the usual terror campaign. YOU WILL BE OSTTRACISED!!! Like Greece being threatened with Grexit when no such thing was even being contemplated as a possibility. Unfortunately for Greece. The same again with Ireland. Threats and terrorisation from outside foreign agents to manipulate the popular vote, against the interest of the electorate and in favour of this cruel, inefficient and catastrophic totalitarian regime.

Need we remind ourselves that the first maniac to propose a vision of a United Europe was Adolf Hitler? History has had fun with Europe, hasn’t it?

Greek unemployment rate hits record high

Bad economic news out of Greece, which should dampen the claims that the country has put the worst of its financial crisis behind it.

Now this is from the Guardian. The outrageous spin of the Greek Samaras – Stournaras regime that insisted (and insists?) that the worst of the crisis is behind us! was never believed within Greece of course and has now become painfully obvious as arrant nonsense for everyone else too.

Of course it is very hard to believe that anyone else did believe it either. The likes of Olli Rehn, Wolfgang Schauble and all the rest of the merry band pretend to believe some of this out of expediency and nothing else. Euro elections looming, banking union idea being neutralised, uncertainty over Greek debt which is quite obviously not sustainable…. but go tell that to your electors…

Now the Samaras – Stournaras regime, in fear of being routed at the Euro elections has come up with the following outrageous spin. The primary surplus!!!! It keeps going up from 500 million Euro to 800 mil up to the billions now from 1.5 to 3 something. In the end the primary surplus will be so high we will pay off all debt in a couple of years. If they are to be believed.

The other piece of spin is that Oh! What memorandum? We are exiting it this year! Oh yes? And just what does that mean? Nothing. Austerity will remain and we are being threatened by Herr Schauble with ANOTHER loan with even worse strings attached which will in his warped logic reduce Greek indebtedness?

So what will we be “out of”? Nothing. Just pushed further and further in.

Of course since all this spin is based on the outrageous to criminal taxation, it is doomed to explode in their faces. There are serious indications that revenue from taxation, the budgeted amount, will collapse his year. It is after all, nothing more than a figment of Stournaras’ rather limited imagination.

For better or for worse, Mario Draghi is probably the only one of the EZ circus of clowns to actually know what is happening. He may well be the only one not in denial. And for all the preening and pontificating, were it not for Draghi in the summer of 2012 with his “whatever it takes” commitment  the Euro would probably be history by now.

Of course the German nomenclatura in its infinite wisdom challenges the only thing that saved the Euro. That is the bond buying plan to keep interest down. Nevertheless, fortunately for the Euro if for nothing else, the commitment was enough to stave off the speculation that was allowed to destroy the Greek, Portuguese and other economies.

Whether the Euro is worth saving is another matter entirely and it appears from recent remarks leading up to the European elections that more and more voices are beginning to doubt this.

But back to Mario Draghi and his sense. The German led austerity imposed by authoritarian rule programme has, as it inevitably would, led to recession and deflation. None of the politicos ordaining overall economic policy lifts a finger to amend this disaster in the making. Instead, they expect Draghi to lower the interest rate to stave off inflation.

This is not just denial, it is criminal idiocy. Okay. So, what if Draghi had today or does next time around, cut the interest rate from 0.25% to 0.10% say. What difference will this make? How can playing around with interest rates achieve anything much at all when they have been consigned to hover around zero for years in response to the exigences of the neo liberal deregulators?

In other words the weapon of setting interest rates to guide the economy in and out of slumps, has been completely blunted. But the Circus of Euroclowns still expects Draghi to solve all the problems they have created and persist in creating through the dunce caps in economics they are still firmly wearing.

But Draghi has said quite clearly. All I can do is gain time. Time which the clowns should use to take appropriate measures to set the economy on a path for growth instead of decline. Draghi has been very successful in gaining time for them. However, instead of using it, they have taken it as proof that “their” policies are “working”!

So instead of acting they just let the can roll down to the cliff while clutching at straws that everything is going to plan!

And perhaps it is if the plan is to destroy Europe and The EU.

Look! the Eurozone is onto recovery. PMI up! Even the Greek PMI has gone up over 50 for the very first time since the crisis set in! Germany is posting strong growth, and Italy, Spain and Portugal are doing well too. Only… well, France isn’t doing too well. But no matter. As soon as they realise they must also slash all welfare, abolish the 8 hour day and all labour rights, they’ll be on the mend too. Why look at Greece!

As well you might. It’s great! Factory output is up! Hmmm, yes well, but workers are still being laid off and unemployment is growing. Oh that doesn’t matter, they have achieved, it is pretended by all, a primary surplus! Ah, but the debt burden is GROWING and little Wolfie wants to add to that burden by offering a further loan with more impossible strings attached so that… Greece can pay them back. But not grow or recover.

Every tiny piece of positive information is instantly pounced upon to show that YES! This nonsense economics is working! Look, even Greece is showing slight signs of recovery. Ok the rising unemployment has not yet stablised but it is not growing at the same pace. As for the totally unsustainable debt. Oh just ignore it to keep little Wolfie and his Mutti happy.

We don’t bother with deflation and dangerously low inflation, we don’t bother with unemployment, we don’t bother with low consumption. No we don’t bother with anything that matters because we are in a state of complete and utter denial.

Professor Yannis Varoufakis has an interesting analysis on why the Eurozone and perhaps even the EU altogether will just disintegrate if Germany does not decide to be serious about all this and to stop being the Authoritarian saying No to everything that would help the Eurozone recover because: “It’s against ze rules!!!!”

Unfortunately it is a matter of vision, of being able to see clearly and, perhaps above all, beyond one’s immediate narrow, short term interests as perceived and onto the big picture. But that takes much bigger politicians than we have today anywhere in Europe. In other words a statesman or stateswoman or two would go a long way to resolving the crisis. Should they not appear then we are on the way to catastrophe.

The Germans and French have already had their elections.

A good question and there are many answer depending on your creed. The neo liberal mantra: We are not competitive! As if that could apply for everyone simultaneously. But for them it does. Probably because the concept of cooperation is alien to them. Compete, fight, kick the other guys ribs out. Don’t help him cross the road whatever you do! Run him over so you can get across first.

Not believing in this creed personally, I would go for blaming the irresponsible self serving scrapping of regulations and the only economic system that was not only more equitable than any other (though not perfect of course), but also worked incredibly well considering.

Now, through all we have learnt of how economics actually works and not how the fiendish neo liberal crazies would like us to believe it does, the world economic order could be fixed relatively easily and relatively quickly. This however would be unwelcome to those benefiting from the mess and benefiting horrendously. While hunger, unemployment destitution have returned to many places in the European Union and very low wages for those in work all over the European Union, the infamous 1% are benefiting delightfully.

But if it is not so difficult to start putting things right why is it not happening? Why is nobody even trying? Why has no one shouted that the King has no clothes? Why has the so called Euro crisis been obfuscated and its true cause never discussed? Why has vile propaganda of a quasi racist nature taken the place of sober analysis and any attempt to see the real picture?

Here, I think the answer is very simple. Those who hold the reins of power and whose job it is to fix the mess, are the very ones who not only caused the mess (which is one of the reasons why no sober analysis is ever allowed) but also the very ones benefiting from the mess as we speak (which is another reason why sober analysis remains anathema).

Nevertheless, in a rather Marxian way, their very grand success in sucking up wealth into their own hands and away from the rest of humanity is at the root of the abject failure of their project. The world economy has stalled and will not recover unless these policies change. Consumption has been devastated. Without consumption there is no growth, in other words business fails, profits fall… aha! You will say, not for banks and the financial wizards! Not for the crazy casino world we are now living in!

Sure enough, but is this casino sustainable? Isn’t it all fundamentally parasitical on the real economy. Which is failing. When the elephant dies the parasites cannot continue to live off him. They have to find another one. But what if the whole herd dies off owing to a plague? The plague created by these banksters in the first place?

All the same I would like to end up on a more optimistic note, rather than that we all have to die first, and that is the following: History, human life, the flow of events is not linear. It never was and it never will be. As the sun rises and falls as spring follows winter, as joy succeeds sorrow and vice versa, the rhythm is cyclical. Always.

And when at Davos they even start muttering a few platitudes about the rise in inequality, even if they have no intention of doing anything about that, you know the first rays of dawn are beginning to crack the darkness of the night.

Not Grexit but Gexit. That is the German exit of the Euro. In a comment on Greek radio today Professor Yannis Varoufakis (probably the sanest voice on the Euro Crisis) stated his opinion that the German Bundesbank’s comment on levies and so on is part of an underlying policy of wishing to exit the Eurozone.

In addition he also explains German wishy washiness (my description) over the Banking Union, which is not a Banking Union but merely a way for Germany to suck funds out of the weaker economies since it makes states ultimately responsible for recapitalising banks. In other words the bankrupt and overindebted countries who are objectively unable to refinance their banks will be forced to bail then in, prompting depositors to jump ship before this happens.

This again is evidence of Germany’s unwillingness to commit totally to the Euro.

My comment: Put us out of our misery! Get the hell out then if that’s what you want and let us pick up our pieces.

The trouble is that this is not what Germany wants as such. It is of course what German Bankers want but not necessarily what all politicians or industrialists want. What they want is something akin to what they have now. That is that Germany should keep all benefits of Euro membership (which are indeed many) but without committing itself irrevocably. A sort of tails I win heads you lose.

This, however, is just as unsustainable as Greek debt.

Well, well, well… after the beauty of the proliferation of internships for everything from advertising to museum curators and every thing else we now have the new Troika inspired solution for “reducing” unemployment in Greece (and no doubt elsewhere too).

Now the beauty of internships (for the employers) is that they get high quality people doing difficult jobs for free. Ok, so, we are told this is so they can gain experience for a well paid job down the line. Very far down the line. However this is not a training. It is exploitation. If it were for bona fide training reasons these hapless whiz kids would be called Trainees and not interns. The trainee has the promise of being taken on properly once he has completed his training. The intern does not. In fact the various establishments using them opt for a string of interns one after the other. The only thing they are not interested in is training someone for the job.

It is legalised slave labour and nothing more.

Similarly the troika inspired plan has gone one better. The proposal is that unemployed youth from 15 (yes, 15… isn’t that too close to child labour?) to 24 should be taken on to work for FREE completely FREE for one year so as to reduce the number of unemployed. I am not making this up. Furthermore, there should be NO minimum wage for the young thereafter either.

This is not economics. It is the revenge of the aged. It is the implementation of hatred of youth from the baby boomers who have become old and sour and completely dispensable.

The Eurozone crisis is over! We are told. A statement that is then qualified with reassurances that “we are on the mend”. Modest recovery (note not growth just recovery) has begun. We can see the first green shoots sprouting and so on and so forth.

In reality nothing much is improving at all, and how could it possibly be when every single member of the Eurozone signed on to Frau Merkel’s ludicrous pact that budget deficits should be abolished on pain of punishing penalties. This little pact ensures that austerity will be a permanent features in the Eurozone, that the weaker economies will remain under perpetual supervision, and by supervision we mean one that will only ensure that any possibility of growth is nipped at the bud.

One witty analyst at the time of signing this heinous document, with broad smiles around the tale, described this particular little piece of Mekelian idiocy as akin to “outlawing heart attacks”. We all know they are bad but how are you going to stop them by passing an unenforceable law?

Another straw being clutched at is Ireland. Ireland has made it! She has exited the bail out programme! She has proved this policy was a great success! You don’t have to speak to the man in the street in Dublin to realise that this too is a pack of nonsense. The Irish economy will remain constrained and under austerity for years. She has to pay back the “generous” loans at a rate in no way commensurate to the ability of her economy. She has suffered recession which she will be hard put to make up, in other words she is set to stagnate for years, as is the whole of the Eurozone, not to mention a debilitating brain drain of her ablest and best young people.

And that is the successful poster child of the German led brain (dead) wave for fixing Europe through austerity alone. Not to mention the Greek “Success Story” where that hapless country was subjected to such inhuman policies for several years because it’s debt had soared. Now, about four years later the country’s debt is much higher both in absolute terms as well as a percentage of GDP, it’s economy has collapsed, unemployment has gone up to nearly 30% (and everyone rejoices because it has “stablised”…. only it hasn’t even done that) and it has lost one quarter of its GDP through the recession purposely inflicted to achieve another idiocy that can never work dubbed “internal devaluation” , a recession that has not yet “stablised” either.

Yet still the Brussels Commissioners, the ECB and above all the instigators of this disaster, are celebrating that the Eurozone crisis is over. Why? Professor Yannis Varoufakis for one makes an excellent case that they are all in collective denial over the disaster they have wrought and the lack of any prospects of real recovery. I believe it was the LSE economists in Britain who pleaded something like being in “collective denial” when a little old Lady (Queen Elizabeth) asked them oh so nicely why it was that none of them, not one, had foreseen the bursting of the 2008 bubble.

But apart from this denial of the realities of what they have wrought, there is also another human failing in play here. Selfserving egoism. No one wants to admit that they have made one hell of a mess entailing suffering and a humanitarian crisis in the south. Everyone wants a) to insist that no! this is not a disaster at all! Look! We have succeeded, Ireland is out of the woods, Portugal will exit this year, even Greece is stabilising and on the road to recovery!

They think that if they go blue in the face insisting that black is really white, this will, in the end, be believed, in accordance with Goebbel’s theory of propaganda . And unfortunately, a great number of people are indeed being induced at the moment to clutch this dangerous straw. But failing universal acceptance of this criminal misrepresentation of facts they then turn to the time honoured fall back position of blaming everyone else but themselves. We did absolutely everything completely right but that damned Greek government did not carry out the programme as planned!

And perhaps the crowning glory of adding insult to injury is today’s statement by Herr Reinchenbach the German official heading the so called “Task Force” here in Greece. Now lest blame should be pinned on him, heaven forbid, he claims that Greece has been a great success. Many necessary reforms have been passed through. They have been keen to take and act on the Task Force’s advice and in so doing have succeeded in setting up… wait for it… The best national health care system in Europe. One that will be a model for health care systems across the whole of Europe!

Whoops! The fact of the matter is that the whole system is in a state of collapse, there is no health care system left at all on the islands, hospitals are being closed down, doctors persecuted, hospital staff are being laid off. But then this is precisely what is needed all over Europe. No more public health care for anyone at all! Then the poor can die off in droves and relieve us of these unnecessary expenses and the rich can pay for it through the nose.

But to end with some bitter mirth an anecdote that best depicts what health care has come to in Greece in 2014. This is a true story. A gentleman on one of the islands needed to have a catheter (a medical draining tube) inserted, but there was no doctor on the island at all. What to do? In the anxiety and the fuss a solution was found. The local plumber did the job for him.

This may be saying a lot for Greek ingenuity but not much for Herr Reichenbach’s model health care system, now is it?

The problem with the world as it is going is the growing inequality gap between rich and poor. As the Oxfam Report tells us, 85, a mere 85 people in the world own as much as the poorest half of the world. (See interesting Guardian report on this).

We see that even the Davos annual binge is “slightly” concerned about this development. And so they should be. However, before we go bashing the filthy rich and condemning them for their successful grab of global wealth and the suppression and pauperisation of the 99%, we should perhaps beware of falling into the pernicious propaganda game we are being subjected to.

That is, simply put, that had politicians, governments and above all the Media functioned in accordance with their “mandates”, none of this would ever have happened. And this is where the “moral self righteousness” comes in. In order to justify and enable the great wealth snatch, the “Greed Creed” was invented. Okay, the “greed is good” mantra was at least up front if totally cynical, but the moral self righteousness employed is positively pernicious.

I think this dates back to Dickensian days: the poor are only poor because of their own fault! They are lazy, they don’t want to work and… here it comes… that is why all welfare must be scrapped! All it does is encourage the lazy layabouts to scrounge off the state!

Second moral self righteousness mantra: Competitiveness!!! We can’t keep living above our means! Workers in the so called developed countries must realise that they cannot expect to be paid such enormous wages and to enjoy such extravagant welfare if “we” are going to compete with the sweat shop slave labour of the emerging countries.

It is the selfishness and false feeling of entitlement of the western middle classes down. It has got to stop! We cannot afford these expensive welfare programmes! We must cut down and ultimately scrap all this molly coddling nonsense! Otherwise we shall not be able to compete!

And this has become the moral high ground. The deceits we are fed day after day, night after night from the media, from debates, from experts, from economists, politicians and everywhere else.

It is hardly ever pointed out that the wealth amassed by the 1%, if taxed reasonably and fairly would be more than enough to fund civilization as we have built it. Or to set trading rules, that we shall not import from countries not applying fair labour laws for instance. All the talk of human rights is hot air and always disappears when it comes to “profitability”.

Quite apart from the obvious. Why is it ‘right” as implied for the rich to keep getting richer and the poor poorer? Why is it immoral for the poorer echelons to enjoy a comfortable life, that is with adequate food, heating and shelter, and is it not considered obscene for the rich to have more housing space each than they can walk around in a year? And so on. I also fail to comprehend why it is always the poor that are “undeserving” and not the rich. Why the welfare defrauders should be condemned so roundly when the Wall Street and City defrauders at best get a rap on the knuckles but are nevertheless really admired, and hugely rewarded, for their intellectual capabilities. And so on and on. Common sense as it should be.

So who is responsible fro the Greed Creed having acquired the high moral ground? The wealthy businessmen and women? Come on, they are just doing what they always did. The trouble is they have succeeded in, as the joke has it, having established “the best congress that money can buy”, which of course applies around the globe. For instance, had Frau Merkel for one (she is hardly alone in this) shown half the concern for European ideals and European citizens as she did for European banks, most of the tragedy would have been averted. (But then she did get re elected for a third time…)

And of course, had the press and the media not been so inclined to use populism and arrant disinformation, the best governments money can buy in Europe and elsewhere, would still have been unable to so utterly destroy civilization as they have done. But then of course the media have also been bought up by those whose interests are not with civilization, still less with the people they are supposed to serve.

So what now? The Greed Creed has become gospel truth and you do not dare contradict it on pain of being burnt at the stake. The politicians have become the hand maidens of the wealthy and the Media a tool of the wealthy not least in keeping the politicians on the straight and narrow. Yet nevertheless, the Davos crowd admit to being slightly uneasy about growing inequality.

And so they should be. Capitalism is unsustainable with such inequality. (See Larry Elliot’s excellent article). Consumption disappears, and though profitability went slightly up when it was decided to pay workers below subsistence wages, very soon profits plummeted and firms started to close down one after another because… well, because there was no one left who could buy enough of the stuff they were churning out.

That is why they are beginning to feel a little uneasy. Though the plan has worked admirably, it turns out it has a sting in the tail, as I do believe Marx, for one,  analysed quite well the century before last.

In a fit of utter despair at the “European” inanity I have disappeared, dropped out of the struggle. However, since that is no way to deal with anything, be it a crisis, death, stupidity or, above all survival, I have decided in “a moment of madness” that I must get back into the fray, as Shakespeare’s Henry V exhorted: “Once more unto the breach dear friends.”

So once more I shall jump in for better or for worse. Of course it is no longer about economics. If it ever it really was. But about power and politics and human nature which NEEDS to be regulated and since time immemorial man has always realised this and tried to regulate human behaviour in one way or another, through tribal structures, the fear of God or, at best the rule of law.

And man has been equally resilient in trying to get out of all constrictions to satisfy his greed or lust for power. So here we go again, trying to sort out the deviousness from the idiocy, the power of propaganda from critical analysis and the psychology of victimhood from that of the crowd.

Meanwhile do enjoy the following gem: In a Moment of Madness.