The hoo ha, the panic, the hysterical threats to the Greek voters from the EU, Germany, the German Press. Central Bankers, from London to Tokyo, at the ready to face the crisis the results of the Greek elections are expected to bring on. Isn’t this all rather too extreme? In fact isn’t it all positively ridiculous?

The immediate fear is not that aliens will descend from the moon and take over the planet, though sometimes it does sound like that. No, the fear is that if the Greek elections go the “wrong” way (a new definition of democracy that), then there will be extensive runs on the banks of southern Europe, maybe a fall in Euro parity, mayhem on the stock markets and… so what else is new? All that has already become a standard feature of the global economy since Merkel decided to dig her obstinate little feet in.

The problem is not Greece. How could it ever have been? A tiny country on the periphery that could have been set straight at a minimum cost. But Greece was not the problem. Merkel was and is.

The European crisis coming on the heels and as a result of the toxic sub prime crash was not properly diagnosed. In fact it was fatally misdiagnosed and horribly mismanaged by Merkel and her side kick Sarkozy. Economic Sense was wilfully discarded to impose a very Teutonic disciplinary regime whereby the miscreants get harshly punished. And the crisis spreads and grows.

When your policy consists of imposing the harshest form of austerity that leads to extreme recession in fact depression, how are you ever going to get paid back by a country whose GDP you have made it your object to sink?

So it’s not the result of the Greek elections. Whatever these turn out to be, the problem will not be solved unless there is a drastic change in European policy. If the conservative ND party forms a government pledged to carry out the austerity as it is, the country’s economy, already in a shambles, will have collapsed completely by the fall. Not to mention the social upheavals and breakdown once it becomes obvious that the ND pre election promises were nothing but hot air.

So don’t be overjoyed when the result putting ND first party comes in. It isn’t going to stop anything, neither the Spanish descent nor even the Italian crisis looming ahead. How could it? As for ensuring Greece remains in the Eurozone, it will not make a jot of difference to that issue either. So Greek elections or no Greek elections, if the real problem of the Eurozone is not properly diagnosed and sensibly managed, then I am afraid the whole of the EU might implode and not just Greece.

But let me end on a lighter note, since tomorrow we vote. One of the numerous jokes going round Greece at the moment is the following:

If Alexis Tsipras wins and with a large majority, then Merkel will have a heart attack and the whole of Europe will rejoice! Answer: To have a heart attack, surely you also have to have a heart?

As a Greek I am disgusted by this show of concerted bullying and intimidation of the Greek electorate. Even Hollande (whom Alexis Tsipras dubbed Hallnadreou) has also weighed in with a more diplomatic way of putting it, but basically reiterating Merkel’s message. Either you continue destroying your already collapsed economy or we throw you out of the Euro!

That was the message, if put in a more cowardly way, in that he said, not me guys, it’s the other bad guys, but if you don’t do as they demand we’ll kick you out of the Euro!

Perhaps all this bullying and threatening and intimidating will finally push the Greeks beyond fear. That is called overkill. Perhaps the Greek Electoral will say, Well go ahead! Throw us out of the Euro! Why don’t you?

And that is the question. Why are our dear friends, basically creditors, so hysterical about how we vote and if we self destruct? What does it matter to them? Why this insistence of either we do as they say or we’re out! They know there is no way the impossibly unrealistic terms of the memorandum will ever be kept, so why keep on whipping the dead horse?

At least The Frau, to her credit, is honest about it. We don’t care if the plan for Greece succeeds. All we care about is making an example of Greece, crushing her into a pulp so that no one else will ever dare disobey us again. Something like what Professor Yani Varoufakis has dubbed the workhouse effect. Make conditions so appalling that no one will ever want to go there.

At least she is being honest where “our friend” Hollande is not.

Quite simply put, the Greek experiment has failed abysmally. The whole plan was greatly flawed from the beginning. And, of course, the Papandreou/Papademos governments made a very bad thing worse. However, though the tyrannical troika was very good at threatening to withhold the next tranche and the next tranche, particularly when Papandreou suggested a referendum, they never tried to push the government into really implementing the necessary reforms. Why? Wasn’t that part of their job?

Another thing this brilliant Merkel troika has failed to realise is that when you push people beyond endurance they do tend to react, you know. So is it this reaction they want to stave off by threatening the Greek electorate? Sorry guys, but if you have managed to cow the Greek electorate then you have only put off such a reaction for a few months at most. And then it will be much worse.

Now, if all you need is a few months to settle your accounts so a Greek total collapse will not matter to you, you are again being stupid. Stop the threats and bullying, just smile and pull the rug from under Greece’s feet in a few months. No?

Well what then? What is your collective problem and why such jitters over the elections of a destroyed and destitute tiny little country?

Is it the possibility of a chain reaction? Is it The Markets? Is it your own cushy greedy little money making machines? Your lust for power, absolute power still better? Or what? Something or all of these. As if whatever little Greece votes in can make any difference. Probably the whole fuss is being made to set up a new scapegoat, or an Iphigenia* as I have said before. And in fact as John Osborne said out loud.

Good thinking perhaps. You must always blame someone else for the mess you’ve made. But then again, Greece is ripe and ready for the scapegoat role right now.  Whatever she may vote. So again, why?

Regardless of the terrible fate that awaits Greece whatever she votes, the whole of the Euro system is set to collapse in a heap of toxic dust. Greece will make no difference. And just having a scapegoat for the disaster does not avert the disaster.

The problem, simply put, is The Frau’s obsession with force feeding her Nonsense Economics down the subservient European gullet. That is what is destroying Europe. Tout court, M. Hollande.

So unless The Frau’s Final Solution is replaced by a sensible and dynamic New Deal, the destruction of Euroland seems set to take place sooner rather than later. And whatever the hell the Greeks decide to vote on Sunday will not make one iota of difference to that!

See my 22nd May entry

Threats ratcheted up to beyond hysteria levels. Olli Rehn, we are told will not be going to the G20 meeting in Mexico on Monday because he may have to act immediately on result of Greek election!

If left wing party SYRIZA comes first, then Alexis Tsipras will have to sign up to everything he has been campaigning against or else Greece will be kicked directly out of the Euro!

If the right wing party comes first they will have only 100 days to implement the terms of the Memorandum or else we are out of the Euro!!

Greece has no choice! Austerity, austerity, austerity! Total collapse or exit from the Euro!

It’s hardly very enticing now is it? And if the aim of all this terrorization is to get the Greeks to vote the “right” way and yes, the right, I very much fear the Goebbels plan may back fire.

In the end, instead of shrieking with terror, Greece will breath a deep collective sigh of relief when our friends and partners decide to give us the boot.

Oh and of course they must rename their currency. How can you keep the word “Euro”, the Greek word from Greek mythology when you’ve kicked the Greeks summarily and dishonourably out?

I do believe that would solve all the common currency’s problems.

The Frau, we are told, insists that there can be absolutely no change in the terms imposed on Greece for the so called “Bailout”. Terms that have destroyed the Greek economy, thrown it into Free Fall with five years of recession averaging something like 5% per annum and set to get worse. Not to mention the return of hunger and the growing number of suicides.

But, no, The Frau says. That is neither here nor there. It is not a question of whether the plan is working or not it is a matter of principal. The Rules Must be followed. You have to stick to the rules, no matter what! Greece is to be made an example of! If Greece is not forced to stick to the rules, even though these are grinding her into a pulp, then how are we going to keep the rest of Europe in line?

No! Nien! Greece must be punished and destroyed. Only then will the others learn to obey our iron rules! Come to think of it, isn’t it like the bloody reprisals during the war? The rule was that every act of resistance by punished disproportionately. For every German shot, at least ten Greeks had to be executed. Whole villages razed to the ground. All the male population over 14 executed. Distomo, Viannos and many more.

However, My dear Frau, you should know that this did not deter the resistance, nor did it cow the rest of the allies into submission either. It didn’t work, it isn’t working and it will not work.

As to The Frau’s overall Nonsense Economic policy, well, all we have to do is look at Spain. Isn’t the logic behind the austerity doctrine that we have to do it to reassure The Markets? Indeed! Of course! This is all for The Markets!

Yes, but what is the verdict of The Markets? Can’t you even see that? What The Markets want is GROWTH! And your Nonsense Economics will NEVER achieve that, even if you shoot every living Greek in punishment for NOT following your stupid rules!

Is there any reason at all why Greece should still be kept on life support? The country is already in a deep coma. We are already officially in default and unofficially we are facing a dangerous scarcity of medicines, a total collapse of Medical services not to mention that the rest of the state apparatus, perhaps policing above all, no longer functions, not least because of lack of funds to buy fuel for patrol cars.

So go ahead. Pull out the tubes. At least have the decency to put us out of our misery.

But apart from the Economics and Finance aspects of all this vicious torture we are being subjected to as a people, there is one far more significant reason why The Frau should do the honours now and pull out the tubes.

Greece was the cradle of Democracy, Philosophy, Human progress. In fact what used to be known as European values all derived from Ancient Greece. European elites were raised and their values shaped by the Classics. During World War II, when Patrick Leigh Fermor and members of the Cretan resistance kidnapped the German General Heinrich Kreipe in that spectacular coup, the two officers found themselves quoting to each other from ancient Greek texts.

Today, our civilization, the one based on Classical Greece has disappeared. It is no more. All that exists is greed, which has to be satisfied at the expense of the weakest, and arrant cruelty. Cruelty in the way this pound of flesh is to be exacted from the hapless victims.

Here in Greece we are in the final stages of the run up to the general elections. The blackmail, the terrorization, the threats the Greek people have been subjected to so that they vote the “right” way is unprecedented. From the Director of the IMF to various Eurocratic nonentities, to member of other governments. They all seem to relish threatening this weak underdog on life support, with unimaginable grief should it not bow its head to the slow annihilation they want rather than a swift merciful beheading.

And not only are these threats of unimaginable cruelty, they are also unimaginably uncouth. What used to be known as diplomacy (another Greek word) has disappeared completely. All that is left now is Bismarck’s “blood and iron” brute force approach.

Relishing the opportunity to kick someone in the ribs when they are already down on the floor, Maria Fekter, the Austrian Minister of Finances today threw the following threat at the Greek electorate: If you so much as dare to vote in a government against the so called memorandum (that is the destructive recessionary inducing terms of the so called “bailout”) then all funds will be cut off forthwith!

The mere fact of the Greeks electing someone the dear lady does not like. Quite regardless of what policy or what agreements may be worked out. If you dare exercise your democratic right to vote out those who have ruined you, we will cut you off! And that’s that!

This morning a 75 year old Civil Engineer blew his brains out with his shot gun just 500 yards down the road where I live. The cruel hardship had driven him beyond endurance. Yes, Maria Fekter. I agree. Pull out the tubes. Who wants to live in a Europe of your making? Who wants to live in a Europe which has lost all sense of identity, of culture, of civilization where all that matters is Might is Right and devil take the hindmost!

The whole basis of European civilization was to ensure that it was not Might that was Right, but that humanity had to be respected and cared for with things like, God forbid! Welfare states, Democratic Representation, Freedom of Choice, Freedom of Speech and so much more. The ideal used to be a compassionate society based on freedom. At least these are the lies we used to tell the Communist block. Till they did us the disservice to collapse when all that began being conveniently forgotten.

So yes. You are all right. In your crazy, cruel, hysterical frenzy to try and deprive the Greeks of every right and above all that of their freedom to chose, your threats of throwing us back into the stone age should we fail to obey you, should be carried out. Instantly.

Europe is no longer. Greece, Hellas, no longer has any reason to exist either.

Unfortunately it will not stay mainly in the plain, as the lyrics go. Sadly, for all the euphoria and the triumphalism this is, again, nothing more than band aids and aspirin to fight the almighty plague that is raging through Europe. Rearguard action in the obstinate obsession that The Frau’s Nonsense Economics will, eventually, work. (What was Keynes’ expression? Pushing on a string?)

Rojoy is doing a Papandreou. He has saved not only Spain but the Euro. And look! No strings attached! None of these horrible austerity measures that were forced down the gullet of the other miscreants (Greece, Ireland and Portugal). But hey, Spain is already imposing a devastating austerity program at Berlin’s behest. And hey, for a country like Spain, the fourth largest Eurozone economy, an unemployment level of around 24% is hardly conducive to MORE austerity.

In fact, what would have been needed would have been a complete sea change of policy. A real stimulus of the economy and, damn it all, a separation not of Church from State but of The Banks from the State. For at the end of the day, who will be called upon to foot the bill? The unemployed, down trodden, destroyed Spanish citizen. Just like his Greek, Irish, Portuguese counterpart.

This has not worked, this isn’t working and this will not work. The Frau has been warned that she has a three month window of opportunity to start getting things right. The way the Spanish episode of the Euro crisis is playing out, it does not look as if she will even realise what the problem is.

Unless she really does have some dark satanic scheme to ruin Europe yet again in vindication or something idiotic like that. I do not believe in conspiracy theories. I do not believe in dark satanic plots. Or that Hitler has been cloned and this time turned up as a Frau. All that is utter nonsense. But The Frau and the European powers that be are behaving so nonsensically that you can’t help beginning to wonder.

Still, I would suggest that the hapless Senior Rajoy tone down the triumphal tone. It is exactly what Papandreou did here in Greece. Every time he made things even worse, every time he agreed to measures shoving us all deeper into the abyss, he would come home beaming and smiling and declaring in triumph that he had saved us.

And look what happened next.

The Rain in Spain? Again? And again and again until we’re all flooded into extinction!

It has been reported that in an article published by the Italian Corriere Della Serra, the veteran German politician has pointed out to the current lot holding power in Germany, that the EU was not created to enable German dominance of Europe but to prevent it.

In Greece, the leader of the SYRIZA party Alexis Tsipras, in answer to The Frau’s threats and blackmailing of the Greek electorate,  has asked, or perhaps demanded to know, where in the charters and treaties establishing the EU is it stated that a country can be thrown out of the Eurozone or the EU if it fails to comply to the terms of a memorandum agreement? I would add in particular one signed under duress and, perhaps not least, where one of the imposing parties the IMF is not even a part of Europe?

In The Frau’s scheming to impose a tighter Europe run entirely by Germany with no democratic legitimation, perhaps these are some of the matters that should be debated before anything in that line goes any further.

Ok, the pressure is on. The hapless Mariano Rajoy is trying hard to get support without the destructive terms attached to such ‘bailouts’ by The Frau machine. And quite rightly so. Spain already has the highest unemployment figure for Europe at around 24%. All it need now is a set of Nonsense austerity measures to push it over the brink.

But No… says The Fray machine, if you are going to use the bail out fund you will have to abide by the rules! Sticklers for rules those Germans. I do believe the notorious concentration camps were also run be very strict rules. You must be governed by the rules! As for flexibility in an emergency? What? Flexibility only applies to working conditions. And all it means is depriving labour of all and any rights.

So no flexibility. Spain will get bailed out but Spain will be subjected to the stringent austerity measures that go with these loans. Because make no mistake, this is neither aid nor a hand out. It is a loan paid for by the taxpayer. Nevertheless, we may make a few concessions on how to present this agreement. You know, sort of a face saving document of some kind which will state that black is not black but just a darker shade of gray and really Spain is an exception. (Another exception? Well something like that.)

But if that is indeed the case, and at this point it does seem likely, then my suggestion would be, don’t bother! Don’t even bother! How do they imagine Spain’s banks will be saved by crushing Spain’s economy and hurling it into rising recession? You prop up the banks with funds presumably to be paid for by the taxpayer as in Ireland (and Greece) on condition that you destroy your economy through tax hikes, imposition of greater unemployment (to Spain? I was going to say ‘have a heart’! But not even that. Simply, ‘have you no sense?’).

So you temporarily prop up the banks. They don’t fail in the immediate future. Meanwhile the inhuman terms you have imposed lead, not to a sudden run on the banks but to the slow and accelerating trickle of funds out of Spain and into Germany (mostly), the economy goes from bad to worse, civil unrest rises, eventually the banks do go belly up BECAUSE of the terms of the bail out. Capital will have drained away. All monies will have been sucked out of the economy to pay loans, and hence out of the banking system. Businesses will have dwindled. And the Banks go bust. Anyway!

Why put the people of Spain through all that inhuman suffering when you already know what the result will be? If the banks are to fail let that happen now rather than after thousands of suicides as is happening in Greece.

Stop this folly! Stop it now!

It’s funny how we all used to believe that one of the core values if not The Core Value of Europe was a dedication to Democracy. It’s funny how so many people fought and died for these values, both in wars and revolutions. We were all so terribly misguided of course. Democracy is no longer a European Value. Oh no, it is anathema to the Great European Project right now.

In  the current edition of The London Review of Books Slavoj Zizek has written an excellent piece on Europe and the Greeks entitled “Save us from the saviours”, reiterating a sentiment that has been going round in Greece for a while now. Zizek describes the erosion of Democracy, how the only elections tolerated are those that do not represent a real choice, as between centre left and centre right parties who will do exactly as they are told whoever is elected. The panic over the Greek elections has arisen because this time there is a real choice.

The unelected, irresponsible, very well paid (and I expect untaxed) so called President of the EU Herman Van Rompuy has struck again. Precisely for the reasons described by Zizek. The Greek election is dangerous!!! What if they don’t return the usual subservient, submissive government? What if they dare challenge The Frau’s omniscience and her commandments set in stone?

This can NEVER be allowed to happen! So out trots Mr “Who are you?”, as most aptly dubbed by Nigel Farage, and threatens the Greek people on the eve of the run up election that if they don’t vote the right way they wont get any more money and will be left to starve to death and die on the streets in droves! (Failing to point out, however, that that will be their fate anyway if they continue with The Frau’s evil policy of economic destruction.)

I would like to close with Zizek’s closing paragraph: “Greece is not an exception. It is one of the main testing grounds for a new socio-economic model of potentially unlimited application: a depoliticised technocracy in which bankers and other experts are allowed to demolish democracy. By saving Greece from its so-called saviours, we also save Europe itself.” (my bold print).

And with a little video of one of Nigel Farage’s speeches in the EP which has turned out to be very prophetic. And he is right. We do not want this German dominated Europe. And yes, our parents and grandparents fought and died to prevent this.

In today’s extremely volatile circumstances France achieved a significant success. It sold a range of bonds at its lowest borrowing costs during the Euro era. No mean feat I would say.

Hollande has already begun reversing some of Sarkozy’s vicious austerity concerning pensions and is pushing for change in Merkel’s destructive recession inducing policies by at least insisting on a plan for growth which has been anathema to The Frau throughout.

Now lets go back to pre election France. What were we being told? If Hollande wins, the markets will turn on him, borrowing rates will soar and eventually all hell will break loose! Well it didn’t happen that way. And not because Hollande back peddled on his election pledges either. Quite the contrary. However what is the verdict from the dogmatic neoliberal free marketeers?

We are told by the Guardian today that “analysts” (high priests of dogma more likely) are worried that “record low yields could encourage Hollande to stick with a looser fiscal policy.” How terrible! How horrific! But isn’t the core belief that “Markets always know best”? Why suggest the markets are getting it wrong this time? Because their verdict has gone against your pet policies of screwing the people?

And at the same time, why are these champions of the Free Market so desperate for Central Bank intervention either in the Eurozone or the US? Surely, orthodox capitalism dictates that if a business, be this a shoe factory or a bank, fails, it should be allowed to go bust because those are the rules of the game.

But then what else do we need to realise that all this Nonsense Economics that is slowly but surely bringing the world economy to its knees is based on bigoted, vicious dogma and not any any notion of any kind of economics.