This morning, here in Greece, a spokesman for the smallest, supposedly left wing party of the three party coalition currently pretending to govern Greece, was interviewed. He is a young man and looks rather more like a Yuppie than any kind of left winger. But then his party, the Dimar, is about as left wing as the PASOK party is socialist. But be that as it may.

Anyway, this wretched fellow was going on about how the leaders of this hapless coalition are trying to find the money, aka the people’s blood, demanded by the Godzilla troika. He kept insisting that there were ways and means and that we won’t stick it to the people, even though the technocrat Finance Minister, in whom we all have the greatest of confidence, tends to add the ominous, ‘not if we can help it’. Because we all know that if Greece continues down this crazy path there will be no way they can help anything any more.

So, as the merry Greek coalition continues to pretend it is trying to crunch the uncrunchable numbers, the whole Euro project is slipping from bad to worse and nearing, if it has not already reached, the point of no return. So this affable young man is asked what the government is thinking of doing if the Euro disintegrates.

Answer, oh that isn’t going to happen! It is not in Germany’s interest so she will not let the Euro disintegrate. Not a moment of doubt in his confident little mind. But, the journalist insists, have the coalition party leaders discussed the possibility? No! Comes the answer. Not at all!

Why should they? No doubt they all subscribe to the illusion that, oh well, don’t worry, that is the way of Europe. It fumbles, it procrastinates, but in the end a solution is always found and the day is always saved.

For months and months, many a wise person, Professor Varoufakis among them, has been saying that the leaders of Europe are in deep denial. What more evidence do we need of that? Let us examine our spokesman’s certainty.

It is not in Germany’s interest to let the Euro collapse. He may well be right about that, but does Germany know it? And even if she does, what has she been doing to avoid such an eventuality? Furthermore, at this particular stage of play we have arrived at, is there really anything Germany could do, given her ingrained mind set, at such short notice to avoid the collapse?

So the European stages of madness: Complacency (still going very strong) like a belief in almighty God, a belief in almighty Europe always getting it right in the end, so, shrug of shoulders, why should we worry? Denial, Euro crisis? What Euro Crisis? The Euro is just fine! It’s just these despicable, lazy profligate Greeks who’ve mucked up their Economy… oh yes, not just the Greeks but also the Irish… well, and the Portuguese… but what do you expect of such sub human races? Oh! The Spaniards too? Hmmm… well, okay… Italy…?

No but it’s all their fault! The Euro is doing fine! Next stage of madness, absolute divine certainty that they know what they are doing. Okay, well, we’re having a little problem with the sovereign debt issue and the enormous deficits of the profligate sub human nations and the banks maybe. But not to worry. Nothing that some good hard German discipline cannot fix! Pound them down into the ground with stringent recession and everything will be all right!

What? Things getting worse? Oh well, it is just the fault of those pesky Greeks again! They never could get anything right, could they? Besides, they need to be severely punished for daring to hold elections! Not once but twice! If that isn’t lunatic extravagance then I don’t know what is!

But not to worry. We have the answer. Just suck all their life blood out of their veins vampire like and they’ll start feeling much better. You’ll see. That is what little Wolfie says. Years of austerity for them, if not austerity for ever for them, that’s all they deserve anyway! And then everything will be solved! Just let then starve. Let them all starve! The Spaniards too! They couldn’t get it right either. So that is the way to save the Euro. And I won’t accept any arguments to the contrary!

And that is the point we have reached. Complete madness.

Do you really honestly believe that the EU, as it is currently structured and with this arrogant Nonsense Economics culture that has gripped it, will manage to get anything right?

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t bet on it. I don’t thinking Nouriel Roubini is either.

Well, the famous meeting between the coalition party leaders of the so called Greek government has finally ended. The statements point to an almighty fudge. The Godzilla Monster (aka Austerity) is demanding blood! More blood! Greek blood! Taking the form of sucking at least another 11 plus billion Euro out of an already rapidly contracting economy.

The statements have taken the form of woolly platitudes. Nothing specific. No extra measures, the say for 2012, provided the measures we have already signed up to are taken. Well that’s more than bad enough! But the point is, I think, that although they know very well that they will have to slash and kill in order to provide the blood demanded by Godzilla, they are, at the same time, terrified of announcing this to the public.

So maybe, that is something. A little something. But things will only start improving, that is becoming sensible rather than the Nonsense ideas prevailing at the moment, when the fear of the people becomes greater than the fear of Godzilla. So maybe. Just maybe, this points to a small step in the right direction.

Don’t forget these squirmy creatures only managed to win the election by lying to the people through their teeth. So they are right to be terrified of the people’s reaction. Very right. In fact it is the only thing they may have got right yet.

So it is The Frau’s birthday today. What can we wish her? A good and speedy retirement, perhaps? Well, what else? We could hardly wish her a good verdict in the history books of the future. She is likely to go down, not as the villain, not as a second Hitler who destroyed Europe in her own way for a third time in a century. No. Because even though history is always written by the victors rather than the vanquished, it always retains a ring of truth.

And the truth is that Frau Merkel is not a villain like her predecessor of 1940. No way. She may be mean, small minded, vindictive, arrogant, suffering from illusions of grandeur on one hand, but also an inability to see beyond the very small German centred, short term picture on the other, but she is not a deliberate villain.

No. She is simply stupid and no doubt very stubborn. Suffering from the stubbornness only very stupid people suffer from. And that is what is leading to, if it has not already achieved, the destruction of Europe by the Germans yet again. Even if, this time, in a very farcical manner.

We have been informed today that the IMF is (once again!) set to cut growth forecasts!

This notorious institution has become infamous for not getting anything right. It keeps revising its forecasts every few months and never gets them right anyway. Not only that, it has the arrogance (others might call it hubris) to forecast what, say, Greece’s Debt to GDP ratio will be in 2020!

Which means it doesn’t know its as* from its elbow, since if Greece carries on under the IMF terms of its so called “bailout”, it will no longer have a GDP to speak of by 2020. You see, they are notorious for only taking one side of the equation into account and forgetting all about the other. What would you do with a first grade student who consistently did that? Yes. Quite so.

But this is the grand IMF, sort of a latter day Grand Inquisition that not only can do no wrong, but is the sole possessor of the Truth, and woe betide anyone or anything who dares question that! And like the Holy Inquisition, the “remedies’ it decrees and imposes on pain of death lead to… well, yes, death anyway. Death of Economies one after another.

And as if that record were not enough to condemn this vile, but worse, incompetent institution, we find it is being run by clueless, unaccountable, arrogant people. The current Director, Mme Lagarde, aka Marie Antoinette, was appointed after the ignominious end of her predecessor and fellow countryman Dominique Strauss Khan. Who didn’t even lose the job because of any of the atrocities he may have committed as Director of the IMF, but because of some possibly trumped up murky sex scandal!

Now Mme Lagarde simply revels in the role of supra national finger wagger par excellence. This lady like all her predecessors gets paid an exorbitant sum in remuneration for getting everything wrong. As witnessed by the frequent need to change forecasts. And she doesn’t even pay taxes on any of this anyway.

Do we really need such a counter productive not to say destructive institution, run by incompetent, arrogant people who only get these cushy jobs because of the global crony elite system? It costs far too much. And not only in the untaxed exorbitant salaries, but in the misery and destruction they collectively cause to economies and… yes! People!!!!

[Photograph from The Guardian]

Mme Lagarde in a pensive mood. What is she thinking about? Isn’t it obvious? No! Not the botched up forecasts. That is after all routine for her, and besides she would never be in a mood to worry about anything as tedious as that! No, she is thinking about buying a new Hermes scarf. What else has this lady to think about after all?

In an interview on BskyB the historian Julian Jackson describes the [utter mis]handlimg of the current… what can we call it? Crisis? Too mild a word. Mayhem, perhaps? and tells us that it is “as if Keynes had never been born”. What else can you say about the crass, vindictive, small minded, vengeful stupidity displayed by everyone that matters, as it were, in dictating policy.

One other thing perhaps. We no longer have democratic governments. All politicians are now like the music hall joke, “the best politicians money can buy.” And oh how they have been bought! Rumour has it that a key player politician directly responsible for the most destructive decisions to have been taken for Greece, has recently purchased a flat in London’s Grosvenor Square!

And that’s the last of it. What about the horrendous manipulation of the Libor rate and other such niceties sort of brushed under the carpet. Naomi Wolf describes the whole dirty, destructive process in her article in the Guardian “This Global Financial Fraud And Its Gatekeepers”.

In short, not only has Europe been hijacked by a brutal Mafia, but the whole global system.

Are we going to do anything about it, or not?

Well yes! What’s all this beating about the bush and soft and gradual approach? What are you afraid of Angela? You know all you have to do is wave a few Euros in their direction and they’ll do anything. Yes, anything at all! Well look at them!

The new Greek government already cringing and kow towing and trembling before the almighty troika, who are just a band of dumb, yes, dumb, Eurocrats! And look at Rajoy, going against every single thing he ever promised in the elections. Why? For a fist full of Euros. Euros of a very doubtful value mind you.

In Greece the billions of billions being “handed out” go straight to the banks. All the Greek state gets is the bill for interest on all this. And Spain? The same. Save the Banks and screw the people. Suck another 65 billion (for starters mind you) out of the Economy for the privilege of ruining your economies on our terms.

Yes, but why bother with such a slow drawn out procedure Angela and co? Surely you know by now that the so called governments of Europe will do anything, absolutely anything to keep you happy so you’ll hand them out some trinkets.

So just do it! Outlaw all and every social benefit in existence, from pensions, to medical care, to public schools, the works!Abolish wages and salaries altogether. Set up workers camps (you know all about this kind of thing in Germany) where the guest arbiters will live under incarceration conditions. They will have to report, or rather be driven there under guard when their 12 hour shift ends, and be picked up again in the morning to be taken to the factories. Seven days a week.

Conditions will be decent. They will have coffee or tea for breakfast and one protein meal in the late evening. And that’s all! We don’t want them getting flabby! And when they grow too old to work? Euthansia! Put them out of their misery. Why waste any funds on keeping the useless alive when all they can do is leech off the state?

Then all your fiscal problems will have been solved! You will have achieved a state of permanent surplus…. or will you? Who will be buying all these lovely things you will be producing at such a wonderful rate of productivity and diminished costs?

Ok, never mind, Angela. You’ll solve that when you get to it. All that you need do now is annihilate the south for starters before edging further north. And you are doing very well, Angela, congratulations. I think you deserve a holiday and can afford to take it. What did you say? When the cat’s away the mice will play? Oh don’t you worry dear! The vermin supposedly running the economies of the south are unlikely to do anything you don’t want in your absence. You can be sure of that!

Suspicions are being mumbled that perhaps these negative yields on the bonds of the surplus Euro countries may be an indication of a pending exit of Germany from the Euro rather than of Greece.

Since Germany has shown in every way it possibly can that it doesn’t really want to turn the Euro into a proper currency, but prefers to enjoy only its perks but none of its down sides, this may well be the only logical conclusion. The decent, virtuous, hard working countries of the north, say Germany, Finland, Holland and of course Austria (with their dear lady Minister of Finances) could form the New DMII block, and the rest of us be left with the Euro.

This could indeed work. Of course the seat of the ECB would have to move away from Frankfurt and to Rome. (Fortunately we can keep Mario Draghi at the helm. At least initially). Thereafter the Euro could drop in value by 50%, inflation could be allowed to rise, and hey! Guess what? Growth may well start returning to the abused economies of the south.

The more you think about it, the better it sounds. For Germany too. Once growth has returned to these beleaguered states, they might even start buying up Mercedes again and all that stuff. Of course, Germany will have a “bad Brand” syndrome to overcome, in that these states might prefer French, Italian, Japanese even Chinese cars, which will of course be cheaper, in an “Anything BUT German!” backlash. But be that as it may, I would say that short of a complete Euro bust up which is beginning to look likelier by the day, a Gerexit could be more beneficial to all concerned.

Otherwise, southern Mediterranean Europe will turn into a scorched earth waste land. Already Greece is falling apart at the seams. The new government is obliged by the terms the previous government signed up to, to impose even worse and more stringent austerity on an economy in free fall. Now, since the Greek electors were under the illusion that they were voting for “renegotiation” of these terms, the politicians who lied to them over this find themselves between a rock and a hard place.

To submit in their usual servile manner to the most extreme demands of the troika  and knock the bottom completely out of the pit, or to try and alleviate some of the worse excesses in a vane attempt to achieve a modicum of growth. Which is what the troika “will not allow”? Either way they will lose their cushy jobs, which is all they care about. And the risk of blood flowing in the streets rises daily.

As for blood in the streets, it has already started in Madrid with the senseless, cruel and vicious demand that another 65 billion Euro be sucked out of a market already in recession with the highest, for now, unemployment rate in Europe. Are all these Euro apparatchiks just dumb or simply sadistic little fiends getting their kicks from watching us all down south squirm and die off? What an aphrodisiac for them all!

And perhaps the “best” piece of news last. Italy has said that owing to all the cut backs and diminution of the public sector imposed by The Frau’s Nonsense Economics, it will no longer be possible for Italy to provide the statistics the EU requires even if it means fines. They simply no longer have the means to do this.

So come on guys! Give up the pretence that any of this Frau inspired Nonsense Economics will ever work and start proceedings for the amicable divorce.

In the light of what things have been reduced to, there does not seem to be another way. As for all those Euro optimists who maintain that oh well, that is how Europe functions. They dither and procrastinate but they do get it right in the end. All I can say is: “Don’t hold your breath!”

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.

Mumble, mumble hours of chatter and of course all the delighted smiles of those participating in their usual chummy, who gives a shit about the people? manner. Our own Greek new Minister of Finances looked particularly happy, all smiles and a feeling of being among friends. In his case I do not think it was the joy of the privilege of actually being there, as it was with the previous nonentities, Papaconstantinou and Venizelos. He is of a far better quality then they. Nevertheless I do fear he is under the illusion that the Euro can be saved and all we have to do is implement the plan!

The plan which by current estimates is leading to a further 7% recession for this year (for the fifth year running) and explosive unemployment of 24%. So I hope he will forgive me if I do not share his enthusiasm nor the belief that all we have to do is sell off more of the family silver, at rick bottom give away prices, oh, and slash wages even more. And while we are at it raise taxes! Particularly on the destitute and unemployed. This is fun!

As for the broader Euro picture, well… hardly optimistic. Spain will be given the loan to support its banks though in an awful fudge. At this stage it is the Spanish state that will borrow and then, perhaps later, this might be transferred onto the banks as their liability. Perhaps. Oh, but little Wolfie Schauble insists even then the state will remain liable.

Fun and games, kick the beggar games (Monty Python) fudge away, talk, talk, talk but say nothing at all that might actually mean something. In the mean time the French Economy is beginning to show the pinch of the growing recession in Euroland, Italy is teetering uncomfortably on a spiky high interest rate, Greece is dead but hasn’t quite realised it yet, but The Frau continues to have her way in a disastrous policy that is obviously NOT WORKING!

Have a good day every one.

As if nothing at all has happened, as if the Greek citizens had not voted once but twice against austerity, yesterday’s vote of confidence in the “new” (okay recycled) Greek government has just sealed the final death warrant on the Greek Economy. And Greek social cohesion of course.

The Prime Minister Antonis Samaras campaigned on a promise of renegotiating the Memorandum that has suffocated and ruined the Greek Economy. He promised extra unemployment benefits, a restoration of cuts for the really hard hit pensioners whose pensions have been slashed to well below subsistence levels and in any case no further cuts to pensions, wages and salaries.

Not to mention a really dirty smear campaign against the left wing SYRIZA party and its leader, accusing them of wanting to take Greece out of the Euro and fling us back to 1960 conditions and other such terrorizing threats.

And what did we hear in Parliament? Well none of the above promises. No. Indeed. Quite the contrary. The new Minister of Finances ruled out every possibility of renegotiation. We have been very bad boys and we cannot ask for any changes until we steer our Economic policy firmly back onto the recession inducing Memorandum course. Only then will we be able to perhaps renegotiate a few little details.

So what we have to do now is undertake a great program of privatization from the water boards, to electricity, to transport, in fact to anything we can sell off. Oh, and of course we must slash wages even further down and sack 150,000 people from the public sector, raise taxes on property even more, because that is what the Greek governments have signed up to. In blood. And only then might we try to mutter a few suggestions as to how to alleviate the pressure.

He is of course perfectly right. Papandreou, Papademos, Venizelos and our ‘new’ recycled PM Samaras all signed up to every last vicious impossible term. Without a murmur.

However, we all know very well that none of this is ever going to work. Ok, yes, they will slash wages and salaries more and they will raise taxes more. However, Greeks have already reached breaking point. In an economy in free fall with an annual rate of recession at around 7%, and unemployment rising exponentially, just where in hell or otherwise are there going to be any resources to pay proper taxes let alone the exorbitant ones planned?

As to the big bang plan of privatizations across the board, it would be funny if things were not so tragic. Now, the railways, at first glance it doesn’t sound like such a bad idea. Until you look at the details. They plan a privatization just like Thatcher’s privatization of British Rail which failed utterly. That is keeping the actual rail track network in public hands and selling off the train services. So those running the train services and profiting from them have no responsibility nor incentive to keep the tracks in order. And we all know how that ended up in Britain.

But, okay. That is just a minor detail you may say. But what about the whole idea of these mass privatizations being implemented now? For all Samaras’ threats of if you vote SYRIZA you are voting Greece out of the Euro, he hasn’t stopped this threat in any way. In fact, he is brining this eventuality even closer than before. So, who in hell or elsewhere will even show any interest in buying up any of the trash on sale here in Greece at all?

Trash, not in potential or capabilities, but in the current state of Euroland and Greece’s Economy which looks more like a bomb site in London in the late forties than anything else, the items on sale have an incredibly low value. That could be an incentive? Possibly. Only there would be no point in effecting the sales if you are going to get next to nothing in return. But on the other hand, with all the uncertainty over Greece leaving the Euro, not to mention the actual Euro breaking up, who in their right mind will want to buy anything in Greece right now? Which means that those who may express interest may well be doing so for all the wrong reasons.

And last but not least, whoever in their right mind believes that any of these privatizations will go through in an orderly manner? Workers who have had their wages and unemployment benefits slashed to smithereens, who have had the rights generations of workers fought for and paid for in blood, canceled for the benefit of employers, are not really likely to just shrug and say, ‘oh well, never mind, c’est la vie.’

We’re in for strikes and riots and unrest. And the Greek people have been left with no incentive to try and help out the government in its efforts. For two reasons. Firstly because it has no reason to trust anyone in the current government since not only have they all persistently lied to and deceived the electorate, but also they keep covering up all the sleaze and corruption they are directly responsible for.

And the second reason, because we are being asked, no not asked, forced to follow a plan drawn up and imposed by The Frau’s Germany that has led to the complete destruction of the Greek Economy and now promises to grind it to a pulp. Greece will look worse than a third world underdeveloped country with slave labour, no rights for anyone, fat profits to be siphoned off colonial style abroad and no hope left for the Greek people. Whose private property, furthermore, will have been confiscated through the excessive tax system.

Does anyone either in Greece or in Brussels or even Berlin really believe all this is going to work nicely and smoothly without any bloodshed? I don’t think so.

But then what do any of them care if there is bloodshed and turmoil in Greece, provided Greece abides by the German set rules! That, after all, is the only object of the exercise. You must abide by the rules! And to hell with your economy and to hell with you too for that matter!

It serves us right. It serves us bloody right. We had our chance in the elections to scupper these vicious and fatal plans. But we blew it out of cringing fear.

Fear of something this government will bring to us sooner rather than later anyway.