Talk about a Pyrrhic victory! The famous Spanish deal. Not only is it a case of well, er um. Yes. Perhaps we shouldn’t bloat the already bloated sovereign debt to recapitalise banks… And ok, perhaps the banks can be refinanced directly and not through the insolvent state… Hooray! Victory! Merkel backed down!
But hey, wait, little Wolfie mumbles that the state will still be liable. And anyway, we have to set up the banking supervisory mechanism and that will take at least a year, and… A year? And do you really think that with all that bumbling about and procrastinating there will still be a single currency or even a European Union in a year?
There will not. It will either be the New German Imperium with its subject vassal states, or else complete disarray, and I don’t know which would be worse. Though I do know what I would chose! Complete disarray any day!
But back to today and hapless Spain. The Spanish Economy is in recession, it has the worse unemployment figures for the whole of Europe (though little Greece is catching up fast!) and what do those bright minds in Euroland dream up? More taxes, more cuts, anything at all that will make a bad situation worse.
Oh, but the fiendish unaccountable hounds that have hijacked Europe and are imposing their idiotic will, have graciously allowed Spain an extra year to reach its targets! How nice of them!
For the privilege of making a poor show of bailing out its banks, Spain is to hike VAT, cut salaries and all the other nonsense measures, in order to reduce its deficit! I am not the first person to say this and not the only one, but it is the perfect analogy. This is tantamount to throwing gasoline on the fire to put it out!
We don’t want to go into the intricacies of sophisticated economic theories, but have none of these numbskulls ever heard of elastacity of demand? That is, when you put up prices, sales go down. So when you increase VAT your revenue goes down because overall sales fall. Not to mention coupling the hikes in VAT with slashes in salaries and wages. When you have less money to spend and prices have gone up, of necessity and not even out of choice, you buy less!!!!
It’s that simple!
In his famous Berlin Wall speech, Kennedy kept reiterating “Let them come to Berlin!” to see for themselves the horror of it all. Well, let them come to Athens and see for themselves how these hikes in VAT and wage slashing and so on has led to a collapse of revenue! Shops have closed, gas stations have closed, the economy is grinding to a complete halt.
And no Mme Lagarde, this is not due to those fat cats in Greece who do not pay their taxes! It is due to the over taxation of the country’s decent law abiding citizens, and they are in the majority! The Greeks have been milked dry. This year even the unemployed are going to have to pay “income” tax, merely because they are still alive and not sleeping on park benches.
The recipe is poisonous! Stop administering it! And if Greece was profligate and it serves her people bloody right to be put through hell, what about Spain? Spain’s fiscal position was very healthy. In the case of Spain it was the banking scam that blew the gasket. But of course, thanks to The Frau’s economic prowess, it doesn’t make a jot of difference!
Screw the people save the banks! As if even that could work! It can’t. It doesn’t. Let them come to Athens, not Berlin. Or maybe Berlin too…. The root of… well not all evil, but of crass, bloody minded stupidity, and… of course, short term gain. Germany is doing very well from all these “bailouts”, milking the cows it sticks into its dastardly programs. But instead of milk, it is blood that has started to squirt from the cows’ udders. And that is no good for anyone in the long run. Angela, please note.
And for those who think I am exaggerating…
Let them come to Athens!
After thought. This speech does give one a very hollow feeling. If for “Communism” you substitute “Free Market Capitalism”, and for Ich Bin Ein Berliner, Είμαι Αθηναίος (I am an Athenian), it’s just about right. After all Europe has managed to neutralize, even abolish Democracy altogether, thanks to The Frau’s obsession with Free Market Capitalism. And as for the Berliners, like the Bourbons before them, they have forgotten nothing and learnt nothing.