News for the day, The Frau is making a repeat performance of her extremely successful visit to Athens last month. She is visiting Lisbon, again for a few hours, as she did Athens, to receive homage and obeisance from her new vassals. Prime Minister Coehlo is expected to show the same servility and obsequiousness that Samaras did in Athens.

The Frau’s excuse for these flying visits of the Conqueror to her prostrate acquisitions is that she wants to show her support for the governments carrying out her policy of the destruction of Europe (beginning from the south). Well, what is ‘support” meant to mean exactly? It appears the People of Portugal are no more likely to come out cheering for their oppressor than the Greeks were. Quite the contrary in fact.

So just what are these little shows in aid of then? Well apart from boosting the Oppressor’s ego and feeding the power trip of the conqueror, I would say the idea is to give a pat on the back to her Quislings. Samaras was ecstatic over the visit. His propaganda machine tried to portray his little stroll down the completely empty “government row” street as it were, as a sign that he had succeeded in turning the crisis around.

Unfortunately for him, this was not The Frau’s object at all. The Crisis must be deepened till the Greek people are not only on their knees, as they are already, but utterly destroyed as will happen if Samaras’ measures and budget actually do get implemented. But she dangles the carrot of the loan installment before him and he runs after it like a dumb hungry dog who does not realise he is being drawn into a death trap.

After all, even if these billions are granted… not one cent will go to improving the Greek economy in any way. It will all go towards propping up the European zombie bank system and, of course, increasing Greek debt, not reducing it.

And after having basked in Samaras’ utter adulation, The Frau is off to Portugal to enjoy more obsequious hero worship from the Portuguese Prime Minister. While the protesting people of Lisbon are sanitarily cordoned off from her view. As happened in Athens.

Now, there is an interesting quote in The Guardian today:

“Merkel is traveling with a retinue of around 100 German businesspeople ? a sign that Europe’s biggest economy wants to help weaker nations grow their way out of the crisis.“

Now that would be oh so nice if it were true. As evidenced by the harsh, inhuman policy The Frau imposes, by the billions in cuts and the catastrophic budget Samaras was forced to enact on pain of losing her horrid little victor’s smile, the last thing this German policy wants to do is “help weaker nations grow out of the crisis”. Wishful thinking!!! Her whole policy is designed to be brutally recessionary and it is achieving its aims perfectly!

Which is why The Frau has chosen to parade around her vassal states for brief six hours trips.

Now why the retinue of so many businessmen? Apart from being part of the show, it could also be so they can inspect their pickings when labour in Europe will have been reduced to something like what the southern states of the US achieved with their imports of labour from Africa before the American Civil War.

She may like to recall, however, that it was the southern slave owing confederate states who actually lost the war. To a certain extent perhaps out of their own sheer arrogance too.

“Germany ‘to study French economy’

Eyebrows must have been raised in Paris this morning after it emerged that Germany’s council of economic wise men are drawing up a report on the French economy.

It’s a Reuters exclusive: Worried Germany seeks study on French economy – sources.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has asked a panel of advisers to look into reform proposals for France, concerned that weakness in the euro zone’s second largest economy could come back to haunt Germany and the broader currency bloc.

Two officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters this week that Schaeuble asked the council of economic advisers to the German government, known as the “wise men”, to consider drafting a report on what France should do.

Interesting timing, given that the French economy now appears to be shrinking (see 8.51am). President Hollande did announce new measures to stimulate growth this week but refused to go as far as a leading French industrialist, Louis Gallois, had wanted — seemingly fearing a public backlash.

Hard to believe that the French people would be more open to advice from Germany….”

This comes from The Guardian’s Eurocrisis blog. Well, well well… “advice from Germany” is it? Or The Frau getting too big for her boots?

It is beginning to become apparent that The Frau and her side kick little Wolfie (the guy with an enormous chip on his shoulder) have come to believe in their own supremacy  and divine right to lord it over the whole of Europe. All the same I do not think that the rumour going round that The Frau has a picture of Hitler at her bedside she enjoys jeering at and saying, “look you bozo, this is the way it is done!”, is unfounded.

Now in his attempt to persuade the Greek people that they must docilely agree to ruin their country because… no, not because there is no alternative, but because that is The Will of The Frau, Antonis Samaras told us that he even talked with God. Implying thereby that this was the will of God.

Well now, since this pathetic figure playing at being PM of Greece believes that The Frau is in fact God, he can be forgiven his misunderstanding. Always the mistress tactician, she no doubt assured him that all he had to do would be to drain the Greek economy of the very last dregs of its life blood, make a good swathe of the population go hungry, another good number die prematurely and so on, and she would hand him his “tranche” of 31 or so billion.

Now before we even tackle the question of what good could this money do anyway, if it is to go to the banks at the cost of destroying what is left of the Greek economy, we should perhaps address The Frau’s tactical deceit. She didn’t mean a word of it. All she wanted was… the usual. To gain time while fighting it out with the IMF. As to the loan installment. Oh well, we can’t release any of that till we have dealt with the overall debt. And perhaps we will not pay out any more at all.

Poor Antonakis. He believed The Frau. He worships the ground she treads on. It’s not so much that he is dumb, though he must be that too, it’s just that he wanted to be PM of Greece ever since he was a toddler and just does not want to relinquish the post. The Frau, therefore, is his only means of doing so. Though maybe, just maybe he has got that wrong after all.

Still, who cares about Greece? The problem is that Antonis Samaras appears to have done lethal, perhaps, disservice to the European Union as a whole. His servile worship of The Frau, actually taking her for God, has made the simple woman’s head turn. She actually believes it now. She actually believes she can dictate what the hell she likes to the whole of Europe. And has made her opening bid for total European hegemony with France now.

She and little Wolfie are on this great power trip. It looks as though they are really getting off on this illusion that Europe is theirs to boss around as they like. And Antonis Samaras must take much of the blame for creating this illusion in them.

The Frau is obviously getting a great kick out of this. However, since she seems to approach economics in a quasi religious moral vein, perhaps she should hark back to her Daddy the Pastor’s teaching and remember. Lucifer came to a vile end because he too believed he was God. Just like The Frau now.

Antonis Samaras prostrated himself before her and accepted absolutely everything and anything she demanded of him. Like Abraham who agreed to kill his own son because God demanded it of him. So can you blame the wretched Frau?

What Samaras should have done is remind her not of Abraham’s servility to God, but the ancient Greek philosophy of Hubris, Nemesis, Catharsis. But of course he has forgotten everything Greek since the only thing that matters to him is pleasing The Frau. Whatever that might mean for the Greek people.

But remember Antonaki, this kind of Hubris is always followed by Nemesis. And not just for The Frau and little Wolfie either.

Frau Merkel is reported as having said she wants the UK to stay in the EU. She was also broadcast saying (among many other admonitions) that the Greeks should not strike every time a company is privatised. She also wants a fiscal union on her terms. Which are, everybody surrenders their sovereignty to… Brussels, well that means Me of course. She also does not want the banking union unless it is on her terms exclusively which is what all this newspeak over “quality not speed” is all about.

She is becoming more and more brazen and cynical by the day. She has dropped the “we would like” euphemism, for the explicit “I want”, “I do not want”. Which I certainly hope prompts a Nigel Farage type response of “Who are you?’, “Just who do you think you are?”, now that she is dropping her guard and taking her mask of collectivity off.

As I said in yesterday’s post: “some animals are equaller than others”. It is the Germans who are the Orwellian Pigs in the European Union. So I suppose David Cameron should be very careful, lest he incur The Frau’s wrath. As to Greeks going on strike! Small wonder The Frau’s lackey, the confidence inspiring Samaras just pushed through Parliament the most horrific austerity measures that will lead to utter destitution and the total collapse of the Greek economy.

That should teach them not to do everything The Frau wants without a word. Now, you may well say that the Portuguese did do that, but still The Frau’s Vampire Economics did not work as planned. So now she wants them to implement even greater austerity, under the definition of stupidity theory of do the same thing again and expect to achieve different results.

Still, in her authoritarian manner, and already drunk with power, The Frau may have overlooked something. The German Economy is doing far worse under her Vampire Economics, in that production and exports are going down. She is also overlooking something else. When (when not if) the exits start, Brexit, Grexit, Italexit and so on, far from hurting the exitters it will bring the moribund EU down which will, in the end, hurt her more than it hurts us.

Oh, and talking of her little flap over Britain and the EU Budget. What does she have to say about Cameron’s objection, that you can’t insist on drastic cuts everywhere else and expect to increase the EU budget when everyone is struggling to cut their own costs?

Not to mention the vastly overpaid European mechanism form the Commissioners to everyone else in this bloated Eurocracy. People like Olli Rehn and Jean Claude Juncker who are terribly good at telling everyone else that they must impose debilitating austerity and starve to death in order to balance their books, but are not so good when it comes to their own books. They have in fact owned up to a certain amount of mismanagement of European funds.

But when it comes to themselves and their perks, then the answer is, raise the EU budget and get the Brits to fork up while they are winding down their Health Service. If you think that makes no sense, just ask Olli Rhen (notorious for getting all his forecasts completely wrong). He’ll tell you it makes perfect sense. After all, they must continue to live in the style to which they have become accustomed.

Perhaps it is time the EU should start thinking about how to dismantle this horrific monstrosity that what was once a vision has now turned into.

All Constitutions Are Equal But Some Constitutions Are Equaler Than Others, to paraphrase a quote from George Orwell’s exquisite “Animal Farm”. In today’s version of this excellent political analysis (because that is what it is) the Pigs are… No, not Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain, but Germany. In “Animal Farm” the Pigs are the ones who lord it over everybody else and consider themselves equaler than others. Just as Germany considers herself Equaler than others in the EU.

Germany makes a big fuss over her Constitution, and rightly so. The whole of Europe spent this summer biting its nails waiting for the German Constitutional Court to rule over the legitimacy of the ESM. Had they ruled against, it would have been scotched.

Now, Greece’s Constitution has been consigned to the dustbin of history. The Greek Constitutional Court has decreed that a great many of the stipulations in the special package being voted on today are Unconstitutional. Does that make any difference? Not a jot. The Greek Constitution can just go hang. The Greek government is bound hand and foot to do what the troika insists it should. It has even gone as far as saying that the small formerly left wing DIMAR party should also vote for these measures. And that’s an order!

Anthony Verias has tweeted the following: “I’m surprised to find out #Greece even HAS a constitution; thought it was just the name of a square in #Athens #7ngr“

He is right. Yet Constitution Square, Syntagma in Greek, was given that name because the people thronged in the Square in front of what was then the Royal Palace and is now the Greek Parliament, or Vouli, demanding a Constitution to replace the absolute Monarchy of a Bavarian King. Which they succeeded in doing.

Perhaps it is time we pulled our ripped up Constitution from the dustbin of History and also took out some pages from our History which we should act on.

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?

I belong to the post war generation (aka the notorious baby boomers, if only just) who grew up in admiration of the age of reason, of the enlightenment, and perhaps more relevant Keynesian Economics and Nye Bevan’s creation of the NHS out of the debris and bomb sites of London.

Heady stuff that. Anything, we were told even approaching 10% unemployment was anathema and something never to be repeated. Because it was that kind of thing that brought about Adolf Hitler and his German Nazi Party. All this was Received Wisdom. Not in a dogmatic way, but in the way of the progress of medicine say, where blood letting is no longer used because it has been empirically proved that instead of curing, it ultimately kills the patient.

Today, however, in Europe, we are slap bang back into an Age of Unreason and quasi religious dogmatism when it comes to Economics. And to paraphrase Marx, whether we like it or not, Economics is politics and determines how we live and whether we sink or swim as society, as nations and, yes, as a global entity perhaps above all.

Today the powers that be or the “deciders” as George W. Bush famously dubbed himself, appear to have all been sucked up by a crazy religious dogma. The crisis created by deregulation of the global financial system and the “Greed is Good” dogma, has made mush of their collective little mind.

At the moment Greece is being forced into further and even more vicious austerity measures. An austerity that will not only completely ruin the Greek economy but perhaps even demolish the Greek state. Now, though there is no way those force feeding the Greek government with this poison do not know this, they continue to insist on it with religious fanaticism.

A sort of witch’s trial going on here. We shall throw the wench into the water with her hands tied. If she floats and avoids death this way it means she is a witch and will therefore be burnt at the stake. If, however, she sinks and drowns it will mean she is innocent and not a witch. She will not be burnt at the stake. But she will already be quite dead from drowning.

And this is exactly what goes under the name of the troika are doing to Greece. Why? Well, because what I have dubbed Nonsense Economics for so long, is really not even that. It is Vampire Economics. It is as if medicine had receded centuries back, to blood letting.

The so called “policy” being forced on Greece has already drained the economy of billions and thrown it into free fall. But since the “cure” prescribed has not only not worked, but has sent the patent into the intensive care unit, the doctors/deciders think that the only thing they can do is apply more of the same medicine. And not only that, but in a far greater dose. A lethal dose.

This latest austerity package to be voted in by the Greek Parliament this week, is tantamount to the vampire sucking out the very last dregs of blood from the moribund corpse he has at his disposal. So an Economics that can do nothing other than suck the very life blood out of an economy can only be described as Vampire Economics. An Economics, that we know from history, will only lead to tragedy. And soon.

Professor Varoufakis has a very interesting piece describing this so called policy and proposing not only viable but sensible alternatives.

Unfortunately the Greek lackeys supposedly governing the Greek state are just as imbued with this Vampire Economics that it has a mantra: Nobody has proposed anything else! Or a Greek version of the abhorrent Thatcherite TINA (there is no alternative). Mind you, they do not even bother to listen to any alternatives. Again much like Thatcher who was convinced that she alone was right. A tragedy in itself.

But this is, of course, complete and utter nonsense, not only because there are alternatives (and Professor Varoufakis proposes a very good one) but also because it is implied that the “policy” they are imposing is, itself, a viable alternative, even if a harsh one, when in reality it is nothing of the sort.

In fact, to stick to the medical terms, this last brilliant brain wave being put the Greek Parliament for a vote, is tantamount to pulling out the life support mechanism form the moribund corpse in intensive care that is Greece.

May God forgive them for their sins!  Because the people won’t! (Since we are in religious mode)

Could those Euro Commissars, assorted Fuhrers (that is leaders) and IMF apparatchiks please take those blinkers off their eyes and empty the saw dust from their heads?

They are all stuck in a rigid dogma that is leading nowhere near the results even they would like to achieve. News out today from manufacturing figures for the Eurozone. It is officially in recession. Even the German manufacturing sector is continuing to shrink. Yet all the above continue unashamedly to stick with their destructive policies, that have lead to this growing crisis.

As I have said many times before, the only thing they mean by “flexibility” is how best to screw the workers and nothing else!!! Yet flexibility cannot apply exclusively to the labour market and to the detriment of the workers any more. Taking Greece for instance where all labour rights are being attacked with the barbaric ferocity of a latter day Genghis Khan:

Even if we get to the desired point, desired by THEM that is, of a zero wage, or even better paying for the right to work, no one but no one in their right mind will consider investing in an economy where everything from taxes, to cuts, to abolition of healthcare etc, is designed to stifle if not annihilate demand and increase costs! Yes, because costs are not just labour costs, but costs of raw materials, transport and a load of others which are continually being made to go up and up through this insane taxation imposed.

In the Guardian today we were informed that: “a senior economic adviser at Deutsche Bank delivered a damning assessment of the country’s [Greece] progress on Bloomberg TV this morning.

Thomas Mayer said the international creditors should let Greece’s bailout programme expire and the European bailout fund, the ESM, should take over and run its banks.

Ideally, one should have let this program now expiring because it is not working. What we should have done is to change the approach. Do a specific bank restructuring exercise so at least the banks are afloat. Take them over and have the ESM run the Greek banks so they have a banking system. And then offer help through the European Investment Bank and through structured funds. But basically say that the macro program does not work”.

The man said it plainly!!!! the programme “is not working”  how else could one put it, and mind he is not some Looney Leftie in Greece, he is a senior advisor at Deutsche Bank! And still, the Troika is twisting the arm of the Greek government to breaking point (and lets hope it does break) and the Greek government is cringing and groveling and doing its damnedest (operative word here) to comply with a whole swathe of barbaric and completely deflationary and recessionary measures. Why?

Because the powers that be have no idea what flexibility really means, just as they have no idea what competitiveness really means and, in the end they have absolutely no idea how the economy really works in the real world. Yet they are so drunk with power, a power derived from the complete and utter unaccountability or Parliamentary scrutiny they enjoy.

Because it is one thing for The Frau to address her own Parliament and quite another for her to come strutting around and go trampling the Greeks with her jackboots, because those she is devastating have no say in who runs their country any more, and have lost the right to call anyone to account.

And a post script. The Greek Constitutional Council has just declared that the slashes in pensions, the abolition of the Christmas section of pensions and the rise to 67 years from 65 of pensionable age are UNCONSTITUTIONAL!

However, the unelected, unaccountable, appointed Minister of Finances said these measures would be passed anyway, because the opinion of the Council did not bind him.

Oh really? If the Greek Constitution cannot bind the Greek Minister of Finances, then what exactly does that mean?

The hapless Yannis Stournaras who decided to take on the mantel of Minister of Finances of Greece, for reasons best known unto himself, has delivered the 2013 Budget to Parliament. Needless to say, though bad, it’s forecasts are nowhere near reality. The forecast for unemployment has already been surpassed and looks set to get so much worse than even Stournaras predicts. The same goes for the Debt/GDP ratio, for GDP itself and of course for the deficit too.

Last year it was that disreputable man who calls himself Venizelos who joyfully predicted a primary surplus for 2012. The hapless Stournaras is doing the same. And though Venizelos, or Benny as his nick name is, may be forgiven in that he does not have a clue how economics works, the same can certainly not be said of Stournaras.

Here I would like to mention a tweet by Megan Greene “Did the Greek govt include insanely front loaded austerity (Eur9bn in savings to be found in 2013) in their GDP forecasts for next year?”

Which is a polite way of saying that the whole Greek budget and Troika imposed “targets” and ways of achieving them are nothing but stuff and nonsense. Anyone with a modicum of Common Sense, not to mention some idea of how economies do in fact work, can see at first glance, that if you are going to suck a further 9bn out of the economy, on top of the 20% by which you have already shrunk it already, not only are you never going to achieve any of your so called targets, but you are wielding the knife in order to deliver the fatal blow to an economy already in free fall.

Why? Can somebody, anybody, tell me why ostensibly sensible people with a supposed grounding in economics are insisting so harshly on this Nonsense (not to say criminal mishandling)?

If this is yet another sample of German insistence on punishment, then what can I say, other then lets get out of this German occupied Euro zone quick!

After all, if our so called Prime Minister worries that if we don’t carry out this lethal budget Chaos will ensue, I’d like to know what he imagines will ensue when he does start carrying it out.

As Hurricane Sandy hits the East Coast with such unprecedented vehemence, right on the eve of the American Election, we all sympathise with the plight of those struck and the deaths caused. For the moment we could say that at least deaths are limited given the vehemence of the storm, but still.

Nevertheless, since there are so many God fearing people in the US, the majority of whom (if not all) are on the conservative Republican side, perhaps they should pause to think a while. Maybe this is a sign, an omen. In years gone by it would be taken as such. And those still professing to be good, wholesome Christians could perhaps wonder about this.

Wall Street, the latter day House of Mammon, was flooded and closed for two days, so far, maybe more. An act of God forcing the closure of a temple of Evil?

They used to hang women in Salem for far less!

I have just been informed that apparently there are 16 nuclear reactors in the path of Hurricane Sandy as it blusters along the East Coast of the US threatening New York City, where the Wall Street Stock Exchange has been closed, and inland into the States of the East.

One can only hope and pray that a disaster of megaton dimensions, reminiscent of Fukishima is averted. Then we can take up business as usual whereby the only problem threatening the globe is the tiny Economy of insignificant little Greece, where Wolfgang Schauble has dug his precious little heels in as he has imperially ordained that: neither will Greek debt be given the necessary haircut, nor will it be restructured and Greece will not be allowed to leave the Eurozone!

Clever fellow that. So what does he propose? Quite simply that Greece continues strangling its economy through outrageous, destructive austerity till it is quite dead. It appears this might give him some satisfaction.

What he should be explaining to the German taxpayer, to whom he is arrogantly posturing, though is just how will they get any of their so called “bail out” money back from a country whose economy has completely collapsed? As it will before too long if this gentleman does not get his sadistic killer instincts under control, or is pushed gracefully, or not so gracefully, out the door.

Down the special ramp of course. We certainly would not like it if he hurt himself in any way.