Parina

Literature, economics and more...

Author: parina (page 8 of 51)

Reforms!

The word “reform” like the word “flexibility” has been reduced to a euphemism that means “stick it to the workers, stick it to them hard. Make sure they are underpaid, underfed, with no rights and absolutely no security or healthcare or welfare or any thing else ‘wet’ like that!”

However before we are all pushed kicking and screaming into this neoliberal dream (nightmare rather) of Utopia, lets consider this dirty little word, reform.

Indeed, the world is in great need of reforms. But like charity, reform should begin at home. At home being the seats of power and the institutions they exploit.

First of all the IMF. It has turned into Frankenstein’s monster and does not even remotely resemble what it had originally been designed for. Wherever it has gone it has spread catastrophe, pain, disaster and ruined economies and people’s lives. If it can’t be restored to health and sense then it should be completely scrapped. Now a lot of taxpayers’ money would be saved there, now wouldn’t it?

Then the UN, particularly the Security Council. In case you hadn’t noticed ladies and gentlemen wielding power, it has become completely irrelevant, a waste of time and good money, and has in any case already been scrapped de facto by the powers that be.

As for NATO… well what was it originally designed for? The west’s protection against the Communist threat fro Eastern Europe. The only threat from Eastern Europe currently terrorising the European continent is Frau Angela Merkel. And the rest of Europe can do very well without her overbearing arrogant “fixes” designed exclusively to keep kicking the can down the road to preserve herself in power.

That is where reform should start. And if or perhaps when it does (in one way or another) everything else will fall into place.

Remember, the US Founding Fathers knew what they were talking about when they said “Government for the people, by the people, of the people”, remember that one? Perhaps we should. And as soon as possible, otherwise people tend to react in ways these overbearing elites find rather unpleasant.

With anything from Guillotines to firing squads or even the more recent more humane helicopter rescues from government building roofs. Somehow, if real reform is not taken seriously, I fear the humane manner of dealing with these criminals will not be resorted to this time around.

The Fate Of The Euro

Everyone is very up beat about how the Eurozone economy is out of recession (0.3% growth… hmmm), how things have stabilised and the yields on Euro sovereign debt have fallen and remained low (solely owing to Draghi’s as yet untested OMT) and above all that the Cassandra’s prophecying exits from the Euro (Grexit above all) and even worse a collapse of the Euro have been proved wrong!

They always forget, however, that the thing about the hapless Cassandra was that she always got it right but was never believed till the disaster actually did strike. So watch it when it comes to premature triumphalism.

The Greek disaster is being tarted up and covered with make up and rouge on the cheeks to conceal the fact that this lady is in fact already dead. But that may stop after the German elections. It would be inhuman not to stop, though the Eurogeeks are so terrified that the Euro will unravel if even a little country with hardly any GDP left exits, that they’ll do anything to present this corpse at least as a zombie.

They are also so arrogant as to keep stating that Greek debt is sustainable and will in fact be paid back to them. How? How can a country in chronic decline with unemployment levels expected to reach and exceed 30% if, or rather as, current policy remains in force? And more and more nonsense piles up as they cling to the illusion, the German led illusion, that everything will sort itself out if we stick to the rules!

No one even dares suggest that.. rules? what rules? That bunch of punitive counter productive measures concocted in a blind panic with the sole object of saving the banks of Germany and France from a Greek default? And how are they going to save their taxpayers now from a Greek default on the much greater debt level owed them now?

Simple! We shall merely keep lending them more and more so that they can keep paying us back, provided of course they continue sucking their own economy dry in order to … stick to the rules. All that will achieve is a greater bust when Greece can no longer keep up the pretence. After all, just how much tax can you garner from a moribund economy? Not to mention what happens when people no longer have anything to lose?

Still. There you go. That is the current Euro line everyone must stick to because so says Germany, or else!

Nigel Farage is often considered a bit of a clown by some (and a dangerous threat by others). Nevertheless today he spoke the simple truth by shouting out in the European Parliament at Strasbourg, on the occasion of Barroso’s Nonsense State of Europe speech, that the King really has no clothes. He said,

“The euro will die a very slow and painful death, but you’re all in denial about that.”

And that’s absolutely that.

Bad For Business!

At the G20 summit today, we are told:

‘The Chinese deputy finance minister, Zhu Guangyao, told a pre-G20 briefing: “Military action would have a negative impact on the global economy, especially on oil prices ? it will cause a hike in the oil price.”‘

It doesn’t matter that little children are being gassed to death, it doesn’t matter that this horrible civil war had been dragging on for so long with so many casualties. Quite regardless of the rights or wrongs of any kind of intervention. The issue is not the legality or otherwise of a military strike. The issue is not how far such a strike even if legal will have any effect of reining in the bloody violence and the carnage. The death of civilians or anything like that.

No!

There is one argument and one argument only. It would be bad for business!

This is the face of today’s world. Human suffering means nothing. Values no longer exist. All that matters is what the markets want and that nothing that is bad for business must ever be undertaken. No matter what.

The Duc de la Rochefoucaild once said that hypocrisy is the tribute which vice pays to virtue.

It is a sorry sign of the times then when vice no longer even feels the need for hypocrisy any more.

The Eurocrisis Is Over!

One of the reasons why my blog entries are dwindling is precisely because all recent economic data proves that the Eurocrisis is over. Overall the Eurozone has returned to growth and production figures as well as services figures are up just about everywhere. So the crisis is over, right? So we don’t need to keep grumbling and prophesying doom, right?

And then again perhaps not. How many times have we been told that this wretched crisis is over? Ah, but the figures haven’t been so good before, have they? But are the figures really good? Okay, some mild drop in unemployment, yes. Apart from Greece where it is rising, but the great end of the recession being trumpeted is due solely to German growth.

Southern Europe remains in the doldrums. Even the north is not doing so well. Look at The Netherlands. Greece will no doubt explode probably sooner rather than later, if not with a bang with a whimper. France, though appearing to pick up will never be competitive vis a vis Germany owing to the Euro and that holds for Italy and Spain too. So what more can we say without rehashing the same arguments the dogmatists now holding sway refuse to even consider?

Well we could say that the crisis is not over because this is not just another economic crisis. Greece in particular demonstrates that this is not a crisis but a complete and violent exercise in social engineering and a revolution (as in overturn) of social cohesion, values and the final nail in the coffin for its whole production base and very way of life.

How will this play out? What will come in the place of this catastrophe? Will Greece remain a debt colony as appears to be Germany’s choice, in that it wants to keep recycling Greek debt through more and more loans with more and more catastrophic conditions attached?

You see we have now got beyond the realm of economic analysis. We are now well in the realm of prophecy and omens. At the moment the omens for Greece are not good at all. We are in a complete impasse of failure while continuing to beat that wretched dead horse, and the Greek population does not react. It has been beaten to a pulp and is lying moribund in the gutter.

As Professor Varoufakis rightly points out, in an Economic Depression, the people become depressed too and therefore do not react. How long can this last? Will there even be a Greece at all at the end of the line? Another take is that people are just taking it like this because they feel that they can do nothing to change it. The attitude being, well what have we to gain by protest and so on, since we are powerless to change anything?

However, this ‘what have we to gain?’ may well change into “what have we got to lose?’ Nothing but our chains? You see, this is beyond economic analysis, beyond a crisis, this is part of a sea change in history. A landmark in the fortunes of mankind. And for all the talk that Greek recession and unemployment will last another twenty years, nobody has a clue what will happen. For better or for worse. Why twenty years and not ad infinitum, for instance?

So next time you read a forecast, either by the IMF or Central Banks or Labour Organisations or whoever, just take it with a pinch of salt. Nobody knows and nobody has a clue. Just as nobody (at least not one of the Very Serious People as Krugman calls them) saw the great sub prime crash coming either. Nobody had a clue. And that holds true now. It is, after all, a continuing process.

So brace yourselves.

I Have A Dream

Congratulations to President Obama for his excellent speech on the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech. It was a brilliant piece of rhetoric, delivered with all the force and directness we have come to expect of Obama (and without notes, it appears.)

Firstly, whatever else, we must acknowledge that the image of an African American President giving the 50th anniversary speech on the very steps Martin Luther King had stood is very potent and symbolises that for all our cynicism and the woes of the world, dreams can be realised and are. Provided we all march to achieve them.

Which brings me to the second aspect of his speech which was, in essence, a brutal indictment of the neoliberal dogma that has taken over and is devastating the world.

Now, one may say, it is all very well making a strong speech against all the harm neoliberalism has wrought, but what about some action, some positive effective action to remedy the damage? A valid criticism and one with which I fully agree.

Nevertheless, the sight of the President of the USA, delivering such a speech which is a severe indictment of the economic policy pursued by the US (and now German led Europe) for over the last 30 years is indeed impressive, and must count for something.

It is time we all started seriously marching to regain our rights and our human values.

The Legend Of The Phoenix

The recent hit Daft Punk song “Get Lucky”  begins as follows:

Like the legend of the phoenix
All ends with beginnings
What keeps the planet spinning
The force from the beginning

We’ve come too far to give up who we are
So let’s raise the bar and our cups to the stars

I find this rather apt to the era or rather change of era we are living through. The Eurozone… well not ‘crisis’ but disastrous unravelling, the NSA revelations, the Middle East and others are manifestations of a complete loss of trust in any of the institutions we had built up with pain and hope for a better ordered, fairer and more equitable world. A total breakdown of what used to be values. The very word ‘value’ now only refers to the price of shares and commodities.

Democracy even as “we” used to know it has collapsed. The “enemy” is no longer “the other”, the whatever other, but our own. Our own politicians, our own governments, our own institutions, who are all out to “get us” in the name of nebulous trumped up threats or for the salvation of something supposedly fundamental to our civilization, “the banks”, say.

As a result of this citizens, peoples everywhere across the globe no longer trust any leadership, any leader and institution any more because they know none of these are working for them at all, but only against them and for the nebulous “other”, in short their own personal power and perks.

But like the legend of the phoenix, as the song says, all ends with beginnings. We are indeed at the beginning. The end is the beginning so we should take cheer. But despite that or because of it, this is a painful and dispiriting end of an era. An end reminiscent of Elliot’s prescient:

This is the way the world ends, Not with a bang but a whimper.”

And as we whimper out in a surge not of evil but arrant idiocy we should remember what the songs says and act on it,

We’ve come too far to give up who we are

And that could well be our new beginning.

Total Collapse

The Greek economy and all the troika plans are in a state of complete collapse. The troika did  not get one forecast right. The easy way out of this was to keep blaming the Greek government for not doing what they had agreed to. And that is a valid argument. To a certain extent. Arguably things would have been even worse had the Greek government managed to carry out the dictates of this disastrous neoliberal dogma to a tee. Since, you may have noticed, not only has it not worked anywhere else either, but even “hard core” countries such as the Netherlands, always the cheer leader for blaming Greece and the Greeks, is slumping.

Be that as it may. The blame game is not going to solve anything. Nor is this obsession with “carrying out the programme”. It is a programme that has failed miserably and more of the same and harsher is hardly going to suddenly produce a miracle. Of any kind. Even a neoliberal wet dream come true.

However, we mustn’t rock the boat till little Angie wins her election. And after that, we mustn’t rock the boat because it will cause problems for the whole of the Eurozone. However, we have no intention of doing anything at all to redesign the Euro. We just want to keep it ticking in Germany’s favour. At the expense of the south at first, every one else later on if need be.

To this end a 3rd Greek bail out is being considered. Since, one presumes, the first two went so well and achieved such amazing results. If this is a debt crisis, as still claimed, what’s the use of piling more debt on a bankrupt country? And why is it acceptable to keep piling debt on such a country to repay existing loans, but unacceptable to provide loans for investment and growth?

Perhaps Herr Schauble and Frau Merkel will explain this to us after their resounding victory. Nevertheless, the serious press in Germany is beginning to question the sincerity of the Merkel/Schauble dynamic duo. The are being told out right that they are lying to the German voter over a haircut of Greek debt.

In any case, though many mindless desperados supporting the Greek government believe that things will improve for Greece after the German elections, this is as likely to happen as hell is to freeze over. Desperados because they are so desperate for us to get out of the crisis. I am not being derisive. However, more of the same and worse will only lead to catastrophe. Possibly not for Greece alone.

So perhaps it is high time for us all to wake up here in Greece, not before it is too late, because it is already too late. The economy has collapsed and by December it will be in a complete shambles. But we must wake up and start working on how to clear the debris. Not an easy task. And not a task the current batch of politicians and technocrats are at all up to.

Olli Rehn Strikes Again!

Sorry, didn’t mean to make a little rime. But there you go. Anyway, Tony Connelly tweets:

Olli Rehn quotes Brit mountaineer Ed Whymper:”Do nothing in haste, look well to each step, and from the beginning think what may be the end”

To which Liam Cahill adds:

He forgot the bit about ‘except when you’ve already fallen over a cliff.’

The trouble with bureaucracy is you get a lot of mediocre people of medium intelligence no imagination and an unwarranted high degree of self regard running the show. The trouble with Eurocracy is that you get people of hardly any intelligence, no sense and a feeling of divine supremacy since they are answerable to no one, like Olli Rehn (among many others).

Apart from the fact that we have already fallen off the cliff and are floundering in the rapids, Mr Rehn is doing something self serving and rather pernicious here. He is sucking up to his Mistress, The Frau. She is all in favour of the “step by cautious step” approach. However in her case it’s not that she believes in the nonsense she expounds, it is merely tactics.

Tactics to avoid the issue and gain time. We have often wondered if she is gaining time or losing precious time. She thinks the former; however, she may be in for a little surprise over the coming twelve months or so, when she realises she has run out of time completely.

But back to Olli, were he in the private sector which he so extols, he would have been out of a job long ago. Not only that but completely unemployable. What track record would he put on his CV?

Greece Is Recovering!

Here we go again. The Euro crisis is over! Greece is on the mend! All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds!

That is the hype. Based on what? Spurious figures again.

Greek recession for the second quarter was not 5% bet “fell” to 4.6%. So? The economy is still shrinking at an alarming and unsustainable rate! But no, we grab at straws and declare that this is a very good sign! The guy who fell overboard is is still floundering in the water, but he seems to be struggling a little less. In such a case you wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that the situation is improving for him, but that he is about to sink and drown completely.

As to the ‘primary surplus’ supposedly achieved that Stournaras went into a delirious fit over, it has been “achieved” among other things by the government defaulting an all debts to the Greek private sector and the cancellation of ALL public works.

Does that auger well for recovery?

Unfortunately it may well be that the likes of Stournaras and Samaras are beginning to believe their own arrant deceits. Or else they are so cynical and self serving that they should perhaps be brought to justice.

Great News For The Greek Economy!

Deflation continues in Greece

Greece has slipped further into deflation last month, with the latest inflation measure show that prices fell again for the fifth month in a row.

The consumer prices index fell by 0.7% on an annual basis in July, following a 0.4% decline in June. Greece’s CPI has now been falling since April, when it entered deflation for the first time in 45 years.

Greek unemployment is at record levels, wages are being squeezed hard and bank deposits are falling, With citizens struggling to spend, shops must be slashing prices in response.

But Steve Collins tweets:
Greek (EU Harmonized) CPi -0.5% y/y … sounds bad … but it does mean that the price level gap / competitiveness gap is closing

And the question is, what is the difference between a collapsed economy and an economy about to rebound because it has regained “competitiveness”?

Well the first thing to clear up is what does “competitiveness” mean? No it does not mean the ability to produce cheaper goods through enhanced productivity and hence a lowering of overall costs. Because if that were the definition no one in their right mind would be claiming that Greece is regaining “competitiveness”.

Costs in time and money of starting up a business are worse than before the crisis, borrowing costs are not only far worse but have reached loan shark levels for those even able to access financing. Transportation costs, energy costs have all soared up owing to the ridiculously high taxation imposed through VAT hikes and special consumption taxes. The only, and absolutely the only, cost of production that has been slashed is the cost of labour.

All labour rights have just about been rescinded and salaries and wages have fallen through the floor. Quite regardless of the fact that those in work do not get paid on time if at all.

So when all these wild eyed neoliberal fanatics proclaim that Greece is regaining her competitiveness, ALL the mean is wages have been slashed and unemployment is at a very healthy high of over 27% meaning there is a very good sized “reserve army” of labour sure to keep wages this way.

Now, what all this brilliance has done to consumption and the economy as a whole is another matter. Nevertheless, one might wonder where they see the light (Stournaras above all) in that this miraculous return to competitiveness has achieved absolutely nothing by way of attracting new investors, enhancing exports or anything else. The current account has not been reduced through a growth in exports but through an exponential drop in imports owing to the decimation of consumption.

So the question comes up again: What is the difference between a collapsed economy and one on the brink of growth?

Revolution? Mutiny? Anarchy? A sea change in accepted truths? Or maybe even the collapse of the idiotic Euro straight jacaket? All of the above? Or simply a Deus ex machina?

Perhaps the wise Stournaras may let us know in the Fall. (And I uses the American term for Autumn advisedly.)

Older posts Newer posts

© 2024 Parina

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑