The IMF, European leaders, everyone who is anyone or anything agrees in this grand consensus. We must increase competitiveness! Which is also The Frau’s grand design for Europe. Every country in the Eurozone to begin with must become competitive! Now what is meant by that?

Well, we all know, don’t we? Competitiveness as understood by Mme Lagarde, Frau Merkel and a host of lesser males wielding power on this planet, consists exclusively of slashing all salaries and wages to below subsistence level as soon as possible! Abolishing such costly things like social welfare, healthcare, state education and so on completely, because these sissy things only increase costs. And we must reduce costs at all costs…. ? Well yes.

And although one assumes that not all of these decision makers dictating what happens to the global economy are daft, one cannot help wondering just a little. I will not go into the self evident of when they achieve their supreme goal, who is going to buy all these cheaper products, when no available income for consumption will be left?

To the question The Frau refuses to answer. If the whole of Europe is cutting back and imposing austerity at the same time, then how pray is anyone going to “export” itself out of its financial woes, the way Germany did when the rest of Europe was caught up in the boom?

This is all a pernicious ideology that has gripped the powers that be who have conveniently forgotten that they are elected by their peoples. Well some of them that is. Not the IMF chief of course. Now, as to the others, they do know that of course, but they also know all the tricks Goebbels was a master of. The three Ps you could say, Propaganda, Populism and of course Perjury.

But the point is, global problems are nothing to do with “creating growth through competitiveness”. That is a recipe for complete global melt down. The planet faces a number of very severe problems, one of which is the ecology. Another, which we have greater control over, or should have, is growing hostility and wars. A third, how to tackle starvation and disease. Globally. Not just for the privileged.

Competition is no way to tackle any of these problems. Competition as understood by Mme Lagarde and her ilk leads to animosity. And if they do manage to take it to its logical conclusion, it will lead to isolationism, protectionism and wars.

So perhaps a new re organization (and reform!) of all international institutions and received wisdoms is long overdue. First of all, why must you be competitive? To sell more, to boost profits. Why must basic commodities like oil, grains and other foodstuffs be traded the way they are? So that speculators can make big profits. In other words, so they can make “a killing”. Very apt as an expression, because these practices are what lead to the deaths of so many all over the less privileged world.

Now what is that poisonous mixture of the IMF and EU trying to do? Exponentially increase the numbers of the underprivileged on the planet who will start dying much earlier through their plans to achieve “competitiveness” by “cutting costs”, the cost of useless unproductive, in their terms, lives.

It is absurd. Not only absurd but perhaps the greatest crime against humanity ever attempted.  Humankind has reached quite a high in terms of technology, medicine and science. Why should the only thing the so called leaders everywhere be concerned with is how to increase the already unrealistic profits of the fewer and fewer at the expense of the growing majority on this planet?

I think a great big loud clarion call to wake up! And wake up quick! Is in order. We need cooperation. We need global cooperation. We need to shed all self serving ideologies and take a good hard look at the real problems of the world, the problems of the people of the world, and start setting up institutions to tackle them all through CO-OPERATION, at last.

The object should no longer be held self evident as the “maximization of profit”, but the reduction of hardship, the minimization of the destitute all over the world. Rather than its opposite which is now the object of all those creatures holding power globally. And it is only with global cooperation that we can achieve that. Not with competition as understood.

If the current idea of competition remains in the ascendant, then all we can look forward to is trade wars leading to real wars, dangerous shortages of commodities leading to famines and anarchic violence the world over. Don’t forget, the greatest expression of competition is war. That is where tribes and empires and states and nations have always proved their competitive superiority.

The EU has won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Well now, what do we make of that? First of all that it is well deserved. The Coal and Steel Union was originally set up to tie the economies of France and Germany to reduce the likelihood of war between these two countries yet again. The Common Market of the six ensued from this, consisting of France, Germany, the Benelux countries and Italy of course, where the Treaty of Rome itself was signed.

For as long as the cold war was going strong, the Common Market which then changed into the European Union was indeed a staunch pillar for peace, tying the European Economies closer together and making war more and more a remote possibility in the area.

However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the crumbling of the Soviet Bloc, the EU’s glitter did get a little tarnished with the wars of Yugoslav succession, taking sides in the Kossovo debacle with EU countries as key players and in fact the German Foreign Minister the Green Joshka Fischer being the most gung ho and sheepishly admitting he may have got the facts wrong years later.

Then came the introduction of the Euro and the reunification of the two Germanies back into one mighty entity under Helmut Kohl, with the help of all the EU members.

Well we know now what a few had said from the very beginning, that the Euro was badly designed, destined for failure, perhaps even grief and woe, but was only created for political reasons rather than economic ones. The result is what we are living through now. A United Europe of the Peoples (if ever it was, but that was the aspiration) has turned into a kind of Empire where the big bullies prevail over the weaker states.

The EU has turned into an experiment for the imposition of an extreme neo liberal project where welfare must be destroyed, where the only thing that matters is keeping the banks afloat at the expense of the people who are being violently pushed into unemployment, poverty, destitution.

This is being driven primarily but not exclusively by Germany. The other northern surplus states have joined the sanctimonious vilification of the southern deficit states in the push to establish this neo liberal paradise of theirs where the clock will be turned back to Dickensian times with no rights for workers and below subsistence wages.

This has resulted in animosity, the flaring up of old enmities and prejudices, where the northerners look down on the southerners as inferior, where stark images of the Nazis have come back to the fore with a vengeance. And perhaps worse of all where extreme right wing, nationalist, xenophobic, intolerant parties are rearing their ugly heads all over Europe, from Norway to Greece.

This European Austerity Madness as Paul Krugman has dubbed it, has lead to a disintegration of all the values the European Union was supposed to stand for. Welfare, which is now considered an unnecessary expense, Democracy, which is considered a bothersome impediment to implementing the neo liberal dogma, intellectual resilience, since now anyone daring to say that perhaps Keynes was right is booed down and ridiculed.

And the famous Thatcher dictum of “There Is No Alternative!” reigns supreme. All and any objections to this ludicrous, destructive policy are met with a taunting, “What do you propose? What do you propose? You have nothing else to propose, do you?” Always said without even bothering to listen to the miriad other far more sensible and workable proposals. It is a fascism of thought to which even the miserable little supposedly left wing party supporting Greece’s government has succumbed. Funny how they have all clean forgotten their Marxist analyses! (Let alone foregone all common sense.)

This does not augur well for the future of Europe. There is already deep social unrest which will probably lead to insurgency and internal clashes. Meanwhile, just as the IMF has had a moment of epiphany and realised that oh dear, perhaps austerity was not really the best way to go about solving this crisis, it is the EU apparatchicks like Olli Rehn and the German Minister of Finances who poo poo them and say that the IMF is wrong.

The arrogant Eurocrats want to keep running the show in their small minded little way, kow towing to the lead of the strongest nation, Germany, risking turning the EU or what may be left of it into a kind of German led Empire where none of the other states has any rights.

This Nobel Peace Prize could be just one more irony, like when Henry Kissinger was awarded the same prize in 1973, or even Barack Obama before he had even done anything. It would indeed be very sad if what follows this European Nobel Peace Prize award is at best its disintegration  and at worse flare ups and conflicts as the big bullies insist on keeping their privileges at the expense of the weaker ones.

Perhaps someone on the Committee has a really warped sense of humour. Time will tell. And not before too long.

Back to the IMF again. Goodness me! They finally say they have realised that they… well, er… um. Sort of did not get it quite right.They had estimated that for every Euro pulled out of the Economy under their infamous austerity plans, the economy would contract by 50 cents. So great that’s fine, bring on the chopper, women and children first! First on the chopping block not the life boat.

However, whoops! Oh dear. My goodness! Look what happened. For every Euro sucked out of the economy, it contracted by 1.30 Euro. Surprise, surprise! So they got their sums wrong. Again. Do they ever get anything right? And now Mme Lagarde is hectoring Europe for not doing enough to resolve the Euro crisis, and this is hurting the rest of the world. The global economy is teetering on the brink.

Why? Because of ingrained neo liberal dogma and selfish greed on the part of stronger countries. Remember all that Greed is Good crap? Well it isn’t. Take Germany for instance, which is at the root of the failure to resolve the Euro crisis. Slamming the countries in trouble with outrageous austerity plans, she benefited from high interest rates from these very countries and negative interest rates on what she paid to borrow.

In addition, funds fleeing from countries down graded to below junk level  swarmed to German banks. And okay, our production and exports may not be as good as they were but we still have growth, so let the little weaklings go hang themselves. And keep paying in the gradual collapse of their economies.

However, it doesn’t quite work like that. In a global economy Greed is not Good. It isn’t in any economy. Germany thought, hang southern Europe, they are all swarthy idlers anyway, I will export to the new dynamic markets of China and India and the US of course! Oh will you? It appears that this did not work out as planned either. Quite simply because once Europe has started to seize up, the other economies begin to contract too. Simple first year economics one would have thought.

We are on the brink of global disaster. We need to re-plan the global economy and above all the out dated out of touch institutions supposedly in charge, such as the IMF in particular. As I said in yesterday’s blog, it is all very well for Mme Lagarde to start shouting at Europe, but in effect Europe was only following the IMF prescription and still is.  And for all her bluster, the IMF is too. Look at Mr Poul Thomsen of the infamous troika.

Now, in the middle of this, the IMF is dragging its feet over representation in the IMF and upgrading the position of the emerging countries such as China, Brazil. The IMF is very good at banging struggling states over the head and telling them to reform and be flexible, why then does it not apply these principles to its own institution? What? And lose our power and cushy unaccountable (oh and untaxed) jobs? Green eyed greed again….

The World Economic system has collapsed. It collapsed in 2008 when the bubble allowed to blow out of all proportion through criminal deregulation of the banks, burst. We have been floundering since, pushing the crisis further down the road and basically steering it away from what caused it and onto the shoulders of the weakest and poorest who simply cannot sustain it even if they wanted to. Which does not auger well for any kind of resolution.

None of this austerity driven rubbish is going to work. It is only exacerbating an already dangerous problem. What is needed is a new Bretton Woods Conference. A thrashing out of the problems with honesty and an acute sense of what is really at stake. A conference that can no longer be dominated by the strong European countries and the US. A conference that must be all inclusive and take into account what Professor Yanis Varoufalkis calls the Surplus Recycling System of the global economy.

And this is where we despair of anything happening before it is too late. Last time around there were brilliant minds at work, such as that of John Maynard Keynes. This time around we have small minded non entities who cannot see further than their noses and petty self interest to the detriment of the whole global economy. Will anyone wake up?

“Despite recent progress, the eurozone remains the main threat to the global economy. That’s the message from the International Monetary Fund today, which has warned that risks to global financial stability have risen in the last six months.” The Guardian tells us.

Now, since the IMF through its participation in the infamous Troika of IMF, EU and ECB representatives imposing the disastrous European Austerity Madness, I would say that this sudden realization is a bid hypocritical at this point.

When the crisis began, hitting the eurozone’s weakest link, after a lot of bungling and confusion it was decided to set up the so called “bail out” program, initially for Greece. Now The Frau decided that since Europe did not have the necessary know how, they would call in the IMF who knows how to do it. And what did this IMF know how consist of? Stringent Austerity and destruction of all social welfare and labour rights.

So they went ahead. Despite the recent panic from the IMF and the realization (?) that Greek debt is not sustainable, it was always Mr Poul Thomsen of the IMF and leader of the pack who was always the hardest in demanding more e cuts and more recessionary measures (and so he remains).

Now, this duplicated plan of austerity cures all, just slash away at all incomes and increase taxes has led to the only thing it could ever lead to, recession, in the case of Greece outright depression. Why, then, the panic at the IMF over the “threat to the global economy”? It was their policy that led to this situation and there was no way it would not have done so.

The Greek Debt/GDP is not sustainable. How could it have a chance in a million of becoming sustainable when your own plans, IMF that is, consisted of plunging the country into a deep recession whereby it has lost some 25% of GDP on the one hand, and piling more and more debt on the country merely to recycle these funds to the banks, on the other.

So, a simple ratio, Debt to GDP, you raise the debt level without letting one cent of these exorbitant debts go to rebooting the Greek economy and you keep lowering the GDP level, precisely because of the former condition. You don’t need matrixes or sophisticated models to realise that this is a disastrous formula.

So now here we are, ringing our hands and saying Oh! Europe must do something! But Europe has been doing precisely what you have prescribed. And Angela Merkel’s little visit to Greece underlined the fact that it has no intention of reversing this process, till everything comes crumbling down.

Mr Samaras was told that first he has to completely ruin his country through the outrageous extra austerity cuts of 13,5 billion (for now, it will go up to at least 20 before they are finished) in order to.. .Yes! Get the 31 or so billion in more debt, which again will go to the banks in an amount of 25 bn, while of the remaining 6 bn 3 have been earmarked for the payment of a bond and possibly the remaining 3 may go into the economy.

But since the Greek state already owes more than 7 bn to the market, this will hardly make a dent. No matter. The acting Greek PM Antonis Samaras was ecstatic! And okay, he may be a fool or worse, but where is the IMF and what will it do in this situation? Bow to The Frau’s wishes and bring down the global economy through this Nonsense Economics the Fund has connived in or force a complete change?

So it’s all very well for Mr Olivier Blanchard to come up with these very real assessments and dire warnings to Europe, but he would do well to accept and say so out loud, that it has been the IMF’s policies and direct involvement in Europe that has lead to this sorry state and dire prospects for the global economy and they should take responsibility at once.

A lot of talk of why? Why is this crazy visit taking place at all? What is behind it? Why should austerity ravaged Greece, on the brink of slashing pensions, wages, healthcare even more, till there is nothing left, fork out so many funds for a security operation based on draconian laws from the time of the dictatorship? Snipers, helicopters, naval commandos… when our hospitals do not even have basic supplies such as gauze and syringes.

So there is a lot of analysis, and speculation. Merkel wants to express her support for the beleaguered Samaras government which is trying to do her bidding. Merkel has come to check out the Real Estate going for a song which she intends to snap up. Merkel wants to suck out the last dregs from a moribund country. Merkel wants to bolster the Euro so she cannot let Greece leave the zone, for fear of the domino effect.

And many many more, such as her own election prospects. And then there is a lot of empty talk about how brave she is in coming to Greece at all. Brave? I would ask. Since the whole of Greek security capability and more is being deployed, I hardly think The Frau is at any risk at all. She would not have been at risk with even more sensible and regular security. At worse she might have got a yogurt flung at her. But she has so many interchangeable identical jackets that it really would not matter.

No, I don’t think she is brave at all. I think she is clueless. And I also do not really give much credence to any of the reasons being aired over why she might be making the visit. None of these require her physical presence. And as for giving a boost to the despicable Samaras government, her visit will have quite the opposite effect.

In my humble opinion the only reason why Merkel is undertaking this visit, is that like for so many other decisions of hers, she just does not know any better.

Now, what, you may well ask has the current European austerity craze got to do with the Vietnam War?

Well, last night there was a very interesting interview on BBC World. It was of the Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. In the course of the interview she alluded to what has gone down in history as one of the most infamous excuses for savage atrocities.

After a village in Vietnam has been completely destroyed by American troops, for no immediately apparent military reason, loud protests went up over the gratuitous carnage of such acts. So the spin doctors, as we call them now, had to come up with some explanation, some excuse. They came up with the following:

We had to destroy the village to save it.

That is exactly what the current wave of European austerity is doing.

Destroying countries, Greece first in line, in order to save them.

May God forgive them for their sins, because nobody else will.

And what is that? The Frau has announced she will be visiting Athens on Tuesday to “discuss the situation in Greece and across the Eurozone”. (I take the “dumb idea” from the tweeter ‘teacherdude’). So why is she coming and why is she coming now after well over two years of horrific punishment for Greece? And what does she expect to achieve?

Well, she has probably decided to take such drastic action as actually visiting the Capital of the state she has decided to make a scapegoat of, because the IMF says Greek debt is not sustainable (which it is not) and that Europe must either agree to a deep hair cut of official sector holdings (which they do not want) OR, failing that then they must throw more money down the Greek plug hole and guarantee all Greek debts.

So Angie panics and decides to take very drastic action! A visit to Athens! To achieve what? Probably to steel little Antoni’s squirming nerve, tell him to be a good boy and carry on with all the cuts and she will praise him for having done more than the other Greek PMs so far. Or something as intelligent and constructive as that.

This will help bridge the gap of less than a month till the American Elections and then all will be fine. Or something like that. It’s just that the idea of Angela Merkel who has, to be polite, totally mismanaged the European crisis, having totally misread it, and Antonis Samaras who does not even have a pea for a brain and is prone to blatant lying, getting together to discuss anything constructively is a nightmare.

Nevertheless, we should at least commend Merkel for her courage in deciding to visit Greece at all in the present climate. She will not be received with flowers. In fact this visit is quite likely to set off really powerful protests. So she is courageous, unless… Well, unless she is even dumber than we thought!

P.S. A slightly irrelevant historical fact. When Hitler decided to invade Crete using his well trained panzer division of paratroops, these boys (because boys they were) had been told that the Cretans would welcome them all as liberators. Instead, they were met with pitchforks and shot guns and in fact this formidable force was wiped out. The German cemetery in Malame with almost 5,000 graves of young German boys, grimly attests to that.

It is being reported over and over again that there is an impasse in the so called “negotiations” with the troika. The IMF representative is pressing for more and more, actually less and less in terms of pensions and pensioners. Instead of the new and better “climate” that the inept and pathetic Samaras waxed lyrical over, we have a much worse climate, where the troika do not trust the Greek government an inch.

The “negotiations” appear “deadlocked”, for two reasons, we are told. First and foremost because the IMF is insisting that Greek debt is not sustainable but that if the EU wish to remain in denial over this (as they do for a number of reasons) then the only answer is to abolish pensions altogether in Greece, bring in slave drivers, deprive Greeks of all and any rights, because anyway the 2013 recession will be much larger than the projected 3.8%.

The IMF is most certainly right about two things. That Greek debt is not sustainable and that the recession will be far worse than projected. What Mr Thompsen fails to explain to us however, is that if all his demands are actually put into effect, in what way will it benefit the Greek economy?

While the Greek Finance Minister and the infamous troika are haggling over cuts, in a manner that would make the least educated corner grocer blush, certain things, which they chose to completely ignore, are happening beyond their delightfully idiotic “calculations”, over cuts and revenues.

Though it is not geographically far away, the Greek government and the troika appear not to have noticed that things are flaring up on the Turkish-Syrian border. That outright war with NATO involvement may well be imminent. I suppose slashing the pay of the armed forces and reducing expenditure is precisely what is needed under these circumstances.

At home, the Ministry of Defence was besieged, and its courtyard broken into by desperate workers from the Skaramanga Shipyards protesting because they have not been paid for several months. Doctors and hospital personnel are demonstrating outside the Ministry of Health because these grocer mentality cuts have lead to the impossibility of hospitals to function as they should. (Doctors have, in fact rather imaginatively, offered to operate on the politicians without anaesthetic. Well… cuts have to be made!)

But the happy and perennially optimistic Mr Stourrnaras appears quite oblivious about everything going on around him and tells us he is quite confident that the 31,5 bn tranche of the loan will be disbursed to Greece before the end of October. He is so upbeat about it that more and more people are beginning to wonder whether he might not know something we do not.

However, like a latter day Alice caught in this surreal Wonderland, that is Euroland, Mr Stournaras, like Poul Thomsen, fails to explain to us just how the Greek Economy will benefit from this, when the funds (if they do come as he expects) are sucked down the black hole of our insolvent banks and whatever funds may be channeled to the private sector are well below what the Greek state owes the private sector, which means liquidity will not be enhanced either.

And above all, given that to be granted the disbursement at all, the sine qua non, is the complete destruction of the Greek economy by snuffing out the trickle of remaining demand, and throwing the Greek people into a such a catastrophe not seen since the war. 

Where does he find his optimism? Besides, given the growing unrest, which will get worse as things get worse (as they are doing) and amid the government’s promise to the people, that much worse is to come, does he really think these measures will pass through Parliament smoothly?

Oh, and we must not forget, even if Stournaras chooses to, that an almighty stink has just been let out of the bag over how Venizelos, currently leader of PASOK and the second prong of the government coalition, tucked away a list of tax dodgers with large bank accounts in Switzerland that had been handed over to the Greek government by Christine Lagarde when she had been French Minister of Finances.

Instead of acting on it, as other countries did, enhancing their revenue significantly, Venizelos chose to protect these tax dodgers while slapping his despicable and exorbitant tax on houses through the electricity bill.

I would say none of this and still less all of this together augurs well. What is it, Mr Stournaras that makes you feel so upbeat? An Alice in Wonderland Syndrome? It cannot be anything else, because even if things do go the way you plan, it will be an even greater disaster for Greece than if they don’t.

Well, Mr Samaras who is pretending to be PM of Greece has probably realised by now, that “everyone loves to be sucked up to but no one loves the sucker”, as it were. If anyone in Greece had any doubts about his utter ineptness and total lack of any political (let alone even tactical) sense, they can be in no doubt any longer.

In the run up to the election the terror campaign was: Don’t vote for Tsipras! We’ll be thrown out of the Euro! We shall go hungry if that happens! We shall have our noses cut off, our faces and our arms twisted into knots… and yes, all that. But what was it that Tsipras was going to do that would have been so devastating for Greece?

Well, armed as he would have been by a fresh mandate from the electorate he would have gone, not to the troika, of course, but straight to the leaders of Europe and said, we cannot carry out the Memorandum any more. It is null and void because we have already devastated our economy, seen no tangible results, and continuation thereof will only result in the total collapse of the country. We need to hammer out a new deal. A different deal.

What was Samaras answer to this? Shaking with cowardice he said, no, no, no, no!!! We couldn’t dare do that! They would only kick us straight out of the Euro! Quiver, quiver, quake, quake, we must not antagonise the beast in any way! We must do everything he asks of us! And since he is demanding our pound of flesh we must give him two just to keep on his right side!

This “policy” (or lack thereof) Samaras managed to label “regaining confidence” and the fellow either had the arrant cheek or outright foolishness, to claim that his “policy” was working! That the climate had changed in Europe! That we have now shown we can change! That we have regained their confidence! (The magical empty word he loves to bandy about, devoid of any meaning.)

Ha, ha, ha! Hollow laughter all around. He is right, though. The atmosphere towards Greece has changed. It has changed from bad to much worse. The troika have said it bluntly to their face. We have NO confidence in anything you propose! So either you do it our way and devastate your economy once and for all, or else… You won’t get your loan installment! Shiver shiver, quake quake.

Now, make no mistake, had Samaras been absolutely sure of a majority in Parliament, he would have nodded obsequiously and passed all the catastrophic measures through Parliament without a qualm. Just like Papademos and Venizelos did when agreeing to this lethal package, in the first place.

However, things have changed. No more absolute majorities in Parliament. And even worse for the “Leader”, having lead his party on anti Memorandum rhetoric for close to two years, a number of his own MPs that had actually taken him seriously, may not be trusted to vote blindly with him, like the PASOK MPS did with Papandreou.

So what is the talk? We cannot agree to these cuts, we just cannot push them through (that is their only problem, mind, being unable to push them through, not resisting their devastating consequences for the Greek Economy) so we shall have to go over the heads of the troika (oooou! My, my! Aren’t you being daring you bad boys you!) and talk to the leaders of Europe to agree on a political solution.

My goodness, Antoni, can you be serious? That is just about what Tsipras had planned to do which you dubbed anathema and tantamount to being thrown out of the Euro. But what Samaras is planning to do will not help matters at this stage, in that his whole tactical approach has been ruinous. Not only has he not regained anything of what he terms “confidence” but worse, he has made the Greek government utterly contemptible, perhaps even beneath contempt, and hardly in a position to discuss anything with anyone.

It is time, long overdue, that some kind of a state of emergency was declared in Greece (if this is not an emergency then what is?) and a serious government of a few uncorrupted, intelligent and capable people be formed, under the judiciary. Surely, now that the sh**t has really hit the fan with political cover ups of the tax dodgers hiding their loot in Switzerland, the other scandals now becoming more and more public, it is time for a radical change of course.

I have no doubt that such an emergency government of worthy people (as Kouvelis himself had said he wanted, only backed down on) would have no problem being given a vote of confidence in the present Parliament.

If something like this does not happen soon, that is in an orderly way, then we will collapse into complete disorder. A kind of disorder that could even lead to wild lynchings. A fact Mr Samaras and his fellow …. I am at a loss for words of what to call them, so his fellows, would do well to bear in mind.

Helicopters anyone?

I would like to make a small digression today from our on going themes of what Paul Krugman has aptly dubbed “European Austerity Madness” and all its dire consequences, to pay homage to a great man of our times. A great man perhaps of the times just before ours to be exact.

Eric Hobsbawm, usually referred to as a Marxist Historian but universally accepted now as a great historian, died today at the ripe old age of 95. He was a brilliant mind, and although dubbed “Marxist” his mind was not conditioned or fogged up by anything other than his own intellect, faculty to comprehend, analyse and synthesise. Well, okay, you may say that is Marxist. And indeed Hobsbawm remained a Communist throughout his long, eventful life, even surviving the 1956 split of the British Communist party after the invasion of Hungary.

His brilliance and academic prowess was universally recognised, as was his forth rightness and wide range of knowledge. Perhaps his best known book of ours times is his “Age of Extremes” of the “short” twentieth century as it is known, 1914 – 1991. The cover portrays a picture of Charlie Chaplin in his film “The Dictator” a daring satire of Hitler, where he is depicted holding the globe Atlas like.

We bid farewell to excellence and dedication. And I would like to close with a comment of his, as a member of the legendary Cambridge Apostles, 40 years after the event: “All of us thought that the crisis of the 1930s was the final crisis of Capitalism.” to which he added, “But it was not.”

I would imagine that the same goes for this current crisis of Capitalism we are living through now. Many have declared that this is the Final Crisis of Capitalism, but like the Second Coming, it somehow doesn’t come. At least not when we expect it.