Today we have been informed here in Greece of the IMF’s new proposals for the taxation system. And everybody knows that every IMF ‘proposal’ is the next brutal imposition. Now, you may think, with the mess and extortion nature of the current Greek taxation ‘system’ (including cutting off your electricity supply if you fail to cough up in full) the IMF would be coming up with some sensible ideas.

But oh no. None of it. No, all these brilliant economic minds have come up with the following. Increase VAT on all basic necessities, such as heating fuel, electricity, food and that silly kind of thing. Oh, and while we are at it, increase the EXTRA consumption taxes on most of these, but basically on heating fuels. Anyway, slam even greater taxes on our already high indirect taxation, mainly on basic necessities, at a time of galloping unemployment and wages and incomes caught in a frantic race to the bottom. Or rather, oblivion.

Brilliant! After Keynseianism is being effectively outlawed by fiat of The Frau, the IMF has decided it can’t be outdone.  So it has come up with this brilliant idea!

But I have an even better one! Why not just napalm bomb the whole of Greece and put an end to all these problems once and for all? It would put us out of our misery. Ah! But how would the creditors get their money back that way? Well, ‘this’ way, that of the IMF and the troika, they’ll never get their money back either. At least total annihilation by napalm* bombing would be a far more humane way of going about it!

*I specifically suggest napalm bombing because there would be a sort of poetic cycle in it. Napalm bombing was first used  on Greece during the Greek Civil war. Another first for this hapless war weary country.

In 1937 Sir John Betjeman, the famous English poet had written a poem in protest of the ills of industrialization on the occasion of plans for new factories to be built in Slough (near London). The poem began:

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough,

It isn’t fit for humans now

There isn’t grass to graze a cow

Swarm over Death!

(To see the whole poem click here. It is worth it.)

Apparently he, or his daughter, later apologized, because presumably industrialization was now ‘a good thing’. Nevertheless it is quite an indictment of the greed and profiteering at the expense of a decent, healthy way of life. This is a poem. Not an economic analysis. Nevertheless, it seems to me to be rather more apt today than it was in 1937, only this time it could begin:

Come friendly bombs and fall on Brussels,

It’s only fit for silly tussles

There for Fraus to flex their muscles,

A perversion and a travesty

Of all that it was supposed to be.

Forgive the doggerel, but being reduced to nonsense verse is better than being reduced to tears of despair over how European affairs are continuing to be so mismanaged.

To be fair, I should comment on the fact that the ECB has finally agreed to some kind of Quantative Easing, though they wont call it that of course. The ECB will make a trillion euro in new money available to European banks to enhance liquidity. Yet another instance of The Frau back tracking on her intractable Nien! vetoes? Another typically European case of too little too late?

We shall have to wait and see. The last time around when 500 billion euros were lent to the banks at 1%, said banks re -deposited most of it back at the ECB for a quick and easy profit at the expense of the much needed liquidity. Will this time be different?

Don’t hold your breath.

Today I was going to focus on the umpteenth European summit in quest of The Frau’s Final Solution. How yet again The Frau would be hammering on about the design and implementation of a new fire fighting system to be installed at a later date, though the house has already caught fire and the fire is spreading wildly.

However, a new wonderful fire cracker has shot up into the dark and murky European sky. The ‘leak’ about the necessity to appoint a German Official with powers of veto over Greek budgets. Inevitably this has led to bristling fury. However, this whole farcical furore has led to an excellent post from Professor Yanis Varoufakis called Pointless fury: Why both German and Greek politicians are wrong to be angry. 

I urge you to read it. It is excellent. I would also like to add my own thoughts when the leaders of the Greek political parties were being pressured to sign a written commitment to implement everything that would be contained in the various memoranda/contracts to be officially signed by Greece with its creditors.

I couldn’t help thinking that, okay, fair enough, before forking out all the cash they want to make sure that the terms and conditions agreed would be honoured. Unorthodox perhaps, but legitimate. On the other hand, wouldn’t it be equally legitimate for Greece to demand a written commitment from the lenders that if Greece implemented all the conditions demanded of her and yet the targets set by the lenders were still not attained,  then the lenders would be liable to reimburse Greece and pay for the wretched mess they had imposed?

A long long time ago, somewhere in the late sixties, Marlena Dietrich gave a concert at the Golders’ Green Hippodrome in North West London. At the time we lives in Hampstead, which neighbours on Golders’ Green and my father was gung ho for us to go to this concert?

For him Marlena Dietrich was of sexy Blue Angel fame, his generation femme fatale so he was keen. For my mother she was a ‘German woman’, pronounced with great disdain. Anyhow, she agreed and the family trundled along to see the lady in performance.

As far as I can remember she was very impressive and closed the show with a rendition of ‘Lili Marlene‘. I do not recall if this was in German or English or both. When we left the theatre my father was on a high. How great it had been how wonderful. My mother was sour.

Why did you bring us to see that ‘German woman’ singing Lili Marlene? Of all things!!!! She was outraged. Now my mother was always very polite and would never ever say something like: ‘that bloody German bitch!’. But the way she said ‘that German woman’ and the expression on her face were far far worse than any pure swear word could ever be.

Now my father had been an officer in the Greek Navy during the war, that had escaped the German occupation and joined forces with the British forces once Greece had fallen to the Nazis. So he couldn’t see what her objection to the song was. All the allied forces sang LilI Marlene, and besides, Marlena Dietrich had absconded and sang the song to the American troops.

Herrumph! My mother’s reply. Lili Marlene was a German song. A song the wretched jack booted occupying powers sang in the night as they patrolled the captive city of Athens. And she hated to be reminded of those dark satanic times and in London too, the Mecca of freedom, the seat of the BBC service that had given them what news they could get of the war and their loved ones.

But no, no! Everyone sang it. All the soldiers sang it. On both sides. He never managed to convince her. Still less, that though Marlena Dietrich was indeed ‘a German woman’ (with or without the poisonous slur of disdain) she was against the Nazis. For my mother, who lived through the terrible, inhuman occupation, like a rose, a German was a German was a German. And that went for German women too.

Some years later when I had moved to Greece. I came across another song. A different one. A haunting one, called ‘it has become a moonless night.‘ I was told that this song was sung during the Greek civil war. By both sides. Frequently together. A beautiful, mournful song about a lad locked away in prison who cannot sleep on this moonless night. As the opposing forces were holed up in the night watching and waiting for the other side to make a move, some young man would start singing this song which was then taken up by the other side and then the refrain back again from the first side.

Eerie, I thought. Human. Young men, boys still, about to be slaughtered for what? A greater ideal? Greater egos of men far away from the fray giving orders or what?

So what is the moral of this sad little story? That even in war song unites?  That even in conditions of total inhumanity there is always a higher form of expression? Of communication even?

Perhaps. That too. But perhaps another point could be that little Greece, that pesky troublesome little country, went through ten years of war, civil war, destruction, pain, hunger, perhaps even a little glory when, as Churchill said “Greeks do not fight like heroes, but heroes fight like Greeks’ only to be again disdained, humiliated, the first victims of the savage onslaught of the vicious inhuman free market, or whatever it is, ideology, currently destroying not just the economy but the very social fibre of the country.

Or perhaps even that yet again, the destruction or survival of the continent is destined yet again to go through Greece?

A lot of sense being talked in Davos this year. (For a change?).

Again the euro crisis at the center. Again The Frau’s myopic, narrow minded, totally unimaginative way of dealing with the crisis comes under fire. No doubt again she will see nothing, hear nothing and insist on frog marching the eurozone straight down the road to extinction through austerity.

But perhaps the direst of warnings has come from George Soros who said that the European Union “is undemocratic to the point where the electorate is disaffected, and ungovernable to the point that it cannot deal with the crisis it has created.”

As the relevant article in The Guardian tells us, Philip Jennings of UNI (the international trade union federation) is particularly concerned about something that is attacking not only the Greek economy but the whole fibre of Greek society with a vengeance, the savage stripping of hard won workers rights. In this respect he says, and I quote “Technocrat governments are playing with political gunpowder. The eurozone is going too far.”

This is something our own technocrat prime minister should stop to think hard about before he goes about legislating against the last vestiges that remain of industrial bargaining rules.

What is the point of a European Union at all, if all it can come up with as a “solution” to the problems it has created is to abolish all the values Europe not only stood for but fought hard to establish and paid for in blood sweat and tears.

The French Revolution and the rights of man. And, we must not forget Clement Attlee and Nye Bevan’s heroic achievement in setting up a truly admirable welfare state after the ravages of war and at a time of extreme financial hardship for their country after such a catastrophic war.

Technocrats should go back to their desks and do what they can do best. Drawing up plans and working out figures. They should not be entrusted with making policy. Just as the old saying was you could not trust the Generals when it came to making war. Well of course not! They should not be the ones to decide when to go to war! God forbid. And this goes equally for technocrats in deciding economic policy. God forbid, once more. Their job, which they seem to have forgotten, is to execute the political decisions taken by those whose duty it is to do so.

Of course the only problem here, not only in Greece, but everywhere else too it seems, is, to misquote a Bob Dylan song *: “Where have all the politicians gone? Long time passing. Long time ago. Where have all the politicians gone? Gone to graveyards every one. When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?”

* (I give the Marlena Dietrich version out of a misplaced sense of malicious fun. Perhaps a German woman will listen to another German woman).

They’re at it again! Incorrigible.

Last night we heard Mr Junker of the European Commission tell us with admirable precision why the interest rate on the proposed new Greek bonds to be given in the swap is so important. Well, yes, you may say, of course it is important. The lower the interest rate the less you have to pay. So far, so good.

Oh yes, but it’s not so simple. And besides, all this is based on sophisticated econometric models and such which show that for every percentage of interest, the debt to GDP ratio will go down two percentage points. That is he assured us with mathematical certainty, that if we have an average of 4% interest rate, the debt to GDP ratio in 2020 will be 120%, whereas if it is 3%, then the debt to GDP ratio in 2020 will be 118%.

How about that? And indeed Mr Junker looked very pleased with himself when explaining the results of this complicated mathematical equation.

However, for a body such as the Commission and its Troika and so on who cannot forecast the Greek GDP from one quarter to the next, where on earth does he find the gall to make such statements? And with such certainty!

He has probably forgotten, as current economics tends to do, that you have to take into account all factors. He has probably based his forecast on one side of the equation alone, that is debt, and has cried ‘ceteris paribus’ (all things being equal) for all other factors. Such as GDP which happens to be the other side of the equation. That is equally, if not more, important.

However, if the EU continues to insist that Greece apply a policy of recession inducing stringent austerity, as it is now pressuring us to do in order to extend the new loan, then by 2020, Greece’s GDP will have gone completely down the tubes. So any projection of debt to GDP is nonsense when it fails to take this very real fact into account.

We need to change our country. We need to proceed with reforms. But nonsense economics as imposed by the Troika will not only never help us achieve these goals, but may well lead to “disorderly”… no, not default, but disorderly protest. Otherwise know as insurgency, perhaps even revolution.

Well, it hardly comes as a surprise that the infamous PSI under the best of circumstances has been postponed. Under the likeliest scrapped. For all our Minister of Finances’ enthusiastic statements, even expressed certainty, that agreement would have been reached by today.

Of course for those familiar with Greece, the mere fact that our Minister of Finances Evangelos Venizelos had appeared so optimistic was quite sufficient to alert us to the fact that things were going badly wrong. Not for nothing has this gentlemen been voted worst Minister of Finances of the whole of the EU. And for all our knee jerk chauvinism here in Greece, no one , but no one disagreed with that assessment.

But what happened with this famous Public Sector Involvement? Another of The Frau’s wizard brain children. Well now, as you may recall, back in June the first private involvement fix was announced by The Frau, to the tune of a 20% haircut of half outstanding loans.

Among others, a former Minister of Finances, Nikos Christodoulakis, had said at the time that this would achieve nothing, given that we were already in a recession of an aggregate of about 15% already. Nevertheless, The Frau in her omniscience (a bit like a North Korean leader) decided that was it.

But before not so long, in October 2011, just a few months later, it was realized that this was not nearly enough to make even a dent, let alone solve the problem. So The Frau in her continued infinite wisdom decreed a 50% haircut, and badgered poor Mr Charles Dallara all night  till she exhausted him into agreeing with her.

So now what’s the matter? Well, for starters, quite apart from all the sinister factors such as hedge funds delighting in new games (things that apparently The Frau can’t even imagine), it appears that for all her badgering, The Frau forgot the little detail of the interest rate on the new shorn bonds that would replace the old ones. Just a detail you may say…

But it wasn’t just that. It also appears that projections of the Greek economy were completely off the mark. Now, for all the incompetence and dithering and mediocre quality of the Greek government, no one can seriously claim that in October there could have been a picture of where the Greek economy was going, any different to the continued mess we are in today, unless they were blind.

So I think I do detect a slight problem here. If the whole mighty apparatus of the EU and in particular German leadership is incapable of making a decent projection for what the situation will be like in a couple of months, then what’s with all this pontificating of how things will be in 2020?

In other words, if the whole of the Troika and institutions behind them are incapable of drawing up any reasonable and effective plans because they can’t even forecast something as simple as what the Greek economy will be like in a couple of months, then I do think it’s unfair to be blaming the Greek government alone for the mess.

So? Back to the drawing board? That is what it looks like.

Would it be too much to hope that all these illuminaries of the Troika headed by her eminence The Frau might just for a moment consider that when you’ve pushed a country and now are pushing a whole continent into deep depression through your own obsessive Calvinist austerity ideas you might perhaps have got something wrong?

I know that there’s a saying that he (or she, as is more politically correct in this case at least) who made the shitty mess should be the one to clean it up. But if we hold our breath and wait for that to happen, then we’ll all be dead, and not in the long run either!

This is the concern of the IMF and several other economic global agencies. (See report in Guardian by Larry Elliott). This is the problem not just plaguing, but destroying Europe and hence endangering the global economy.

As we all wait to hear whether the PSI deal for reducing Greek debt in an orderly manner will go through or not, is it really too much to ask for ‘leaders’ to forget their egos, to accept they have made one big botch up of the so called debt crisis in Europe and to reconsider their ill fated policies?

With so much vain hope pinned on this wretched PSI which as likely as not will not fix anything anyway, since it is based on false premises, and the rising tide of youth unemployment across Europe, problems will take on a momentum of their own and solutions will be arrived at in a very different, perhaps even violent way.

Our European leaders really should remember our Roman ancestors. As the victors rode into Rome in absolute triumph, there was a lowly slave beside them charged with whispering in their ear,

“Remember, thou art human.”

Yes, Frau Merkel, I’m sorry. But that does go for you too.

Our technocrat Prime Minister here in Greece is a very worthy and respectable gentleman. Unfortunately but perhaps inevitably he is coming in for a lot of flak.

Perhaps he unwittingly bit off more than he could chew. And indeed how could anyone work with such an unwieldly government of 50 or so ministers when Italy’s technocrat government has only about 15? Not to mention the fact that this so called ‘government’ is composed of three different feuding parties in the run up an election.

But I am afraid that the problem is even worse than that.

Quite simply, Mr. Papdemos is also trying vainly to push the once fat now emaciated lady through the keyhole.

And it STILL won’t work!