The Gallois report in France. Predictable. We have lost our competitiveness over the past ten years, so in order to regain it… what else? Shock tactics! Slash wages, hike taxes on the poorest, do away with all that soppy welfare and healthcare and yes! We’ll be back in business! Who exactly will be back in business? Well those who do business of course. The rest can go hang.
In Greece, for all the protests and marches and staggering measures about to be voted in, there is STILL a large proportion of quivering, cringing people who agree with Antonis Samaras. We MUST stay in the Euro. AT ALL COSTS! If we don’t, the sky will turn red, the sea will foam like blood and so on.
These are the people who lap up the media propaganda like milk. Oh! They say, we shall have to do this to get the 30 billion or so tranche!!! The same old nonsense we have been fed every time an installment was due. The trouble is no one can see logically any more. Okay, so the banks will be “recapitalised” for what that is worth. What about deposits? Well, when you are plunging an economy already in free fall into a further recession of probably double digits, then who is going to deposit what where? The banks will go down the tubes anyway. 30 billion or no 30 billion.
Unfortunately, because of this blinkered attitude, and the lie that There Is No Alternative! Shrieked as shrilly as the first time the phrase was coined, Greece is set for total melt down. The strikes and the marches will be to no avail at this point in time. The so called left wing DIMAR party may make a token show of not voting for the rescission of labour laws demanded by the troika, but only because they know there are enough votes without them.
And then of course they will vote for the budget incorporating the worse, most inhuman and most ineffective austerity ever imposed on a country in peace time. Quite how they square that with their consciences is a wonder.
But back to France. The report says competitiveness has gone down “over the last ten years”. That bit is passed over as the attack on labour and human rights sets in with a vengeance. However, quite coincidentally, the past ten years have been the years of the Euro.
France has not lost its competitiveness vis a vis Germany, any more than Italy or Spain has, because of labour laws or wage levels. No. And everybody knows that. they have lost their competitiveness because they have been locked into the latter day Gold Standard called the Euro.
For all Germany’s empty talk of wanting to save the Euro, the truth is that Germany wants to give nothing up and force all the rest to relinquish their sovereignty to her. In other words to set up a German Economic zone where she alone will call the shots in a mixture of punishing morality and stark, unabashed self interest.
The Euro has been a disaster, as some had predicted from the outset. Now in the laboratory of the real world the Euro experiment has failed appallingly. It is time the destruction were stopped.
There is no doubt that breaking the Euro up is an extremely difficult project. But either Europe tackles these difficulties and arranges say for floating Euro parities, say Italian Euro, French Euro or something like that, or else Europe will have ceased to exist in The Frau’s five years.
Yes, the dear lady did say that. We need another five years of this debilitating austerity, for the rest of you, and then everything will be in order again.
Is The Frau another King Canute or is it just that she has decided to defy gravity?