It’s rather an irony of fate that Europe is going to come crashing down only because in 1923 hyper inflation ran amok in Weimar Germany. Now, the Weimar Republic as we all know only too well, found itself in this plight through the harsh reparations policy imposed on it by the victors, a policy of squeezing the Republic so hard that it would ?make the pips squeak?. A policy today?s Germany has found it in her heart to impose primarily on Greece but gradually and by degrees on the rest of Europe too.

Do you think it’s a case of revenge being savoured cold? Quite likely, cold being the operative word. The other way of describing this d?j? vue is a total lack of imagination on the part of the Germans.

Anyway, Germany’s refusal to agree to any kind of remedy that could relieve this crisis, particularly with regard to the part the ECB could and should play, is what will make the Euro explode into smithereens. Of course if it is a case of revenge for the awful reparations the rest of Europe imposed on them after the first world war, it is a rather Kamikazi way of doing it, isn?t it? And Kamikazi tactics are not really something the Germans are renowned for (nor are the Japanese for that matter in matters of finance).

No, unfortunately it appears to be sheer bloody mindedness on the part of the Germans who can?t or won?t see beyond their nose and the utter ineptitude of all the rest, particularly France, whose President appears to be suffering from some kind of disorder in his spine, or something.

But be that as it may, Italy, now coming down with a bad case of flu owing to the drafts favoured by Germany, is having austerity imposed on it when that country’s problem is not a budget deficit but a lack of growth!!! So when austerity will have achieved its object and pushed Italy into recession, then The Markets (you know, like God with a Capital Letter) will decide Italy isn?t a good bet any more, and so spreads will rise and credit ratings go down. Which is what the austerity package was supposed to avert. Or wasn?t it?

Revenge? Well, is there any other rational explanation?

We hoped we would get a new government here in Greece. We were to be disappointed. We have the same old catastrophic team, particularly in the Ministry of Finance, and only a new Prime Minister. Well, the good side is that at least this new man in charge, Loukas Papademos is intelligent, honest, methodical and as an ex vice governor of the European Central Bank and more, knows his stuff (whereas the previous lot didn?t have a clue about anything) and, we hope, will be better able to handle a modicum of negotiations.

The bad side is that as long as Frau Merkel insists on her one way street austerity (as David Harvey puts it in his excellent book, The Enigma of Capital: Save the banks screw the people!) things will continue getting worse and worse. I have also said and continue to believe, that the way things are now, if God himself (or even Zeus come to think of it except he was always more wily) took charge of the Greek government today, it would be impossible to carry out the Merkel dictates.

The whole of the public sector is in a state of disintegration and hardly anything is running any more, nor will it when the employees are continually being threatened with the sack on the one hand and further reductions in salaries, indiscriminately.

This is also a wonderful recipe for the self destruction of the Banking System (with capital letters), because it doesn’t take an economist to see (of course the economists are the ones who don’t ever see) that if you ?save” the banks through austerity which leads to recession which leads to the destruction of the economy (as is happening here in Greece and has begun in the rest of Europe too), then how will the banks have been saved when there is so little economic activity that they fail anyway through lack of business? You would have thought that would be simple enough to work out. But no, alas, it seems not to be so.

Something else I can’t help grinning at is the following: The Euro geeks were so terrified of Greece holding a referendum because for all Papandreou’s being in denial of what the result would have been, they at least knew well enough that we would have returned a resounding NO! Which is also why they don’t want elections now either. A democratic right now denied Italy as well. Interesting.

However, they cannot do any more than try to keep putting the inevitable off by, as has so often been said, kicking the can further down the road. But time is running out for us all. The funny thing is (in a tragicomic way that is) that since elections appear to have been scheduled for Feb (i.e. when the present government will have safely ratified the new loan ‘package’ and even harsher austerity measures that go with it) the left as a whole will have won a good deal more of the votes than Frau Merkel would find comfortable for one. And this is probably the best case scenario. As for the worst case scenario, well. Traditionally Europe has endeavoured to solve its differences in less civilized ways than elections. Lets hope we have at least grown out of the play ground brawl.

Our ex and still floating over us Prim Minister keeps insisting that he has ?saved? Greece. A boast repeated at nauseum and usually every time things get worse, and then a lot worse after that and so on. However, if we have been “saved” at all so far, it has been at the cost of our economy. The IMF EU rescue package was only given at the cost of extremely harsh austerity measures. Salaries, wages and pensions slashed, taxation raised to extortion levels, and if we don’t pay we shall have our electricity cut off. And many people don’t have the money to pay at all and will certainly go bust if this taxation keeps up. As if that were all not enough, our unemployment rate has risen to something like 17% and is rising. We have been pushed into a deep recession which is going to continue. People are literally going hungry. There have been cases of kids fainting in schools and people have been organizing soup kitchens. Furthermore all that this is expected to accomplish is that by 2020 we might just get back to conditions of 2009 which were the abysmal conditions that pushed us into this mess in the first place. I.e. we will still go bust in the end. So, the new bail out is to be given in exchange for a continuation of this policy with even harsher terms and also a group of Europeans coming in to run the country, sort of like colonial governors who know best and sneer at the primitive natives. So is it surprising the Greek population is lacking enthusiasm for this nice little plan? But this is in fact the policy the Germans have been imposing over the whole of Europe, in a sort of nanny knows best way. Austerity to death! And in fact they have pushed Europe into stagnation with recession just round the corner if not already here for the EU as a whole.

By cutting back budgets destroying health services halving pensions etc, they expect to save money to pay the banks. OK. However, if you ruin your economies, I.e. stop producing and earning as much, you’ll never pay back the banks whatever you do, and then where will the precious banks be? Going bust like the rest of us among the ashes and runs of what once used to be the European Union. That is what appears to evade them. Mind you Cameron is just as nuts but I have seen articles in the Guardian demanding a change of policy!

Now one thing we have realised through the experience of this sovereign debt crisis here in Greece is that capitalism is, despite everything, a very vulnerable little creature after all. Things one has been taking for granted all one?s life have started to crumble and shake. Little every day things like knowing the buses and trains will be working, bar the odd strike or two. That you can pop into the corner shop for something you forgot. That electricity and water supplies will always be there and things like that.

The helter skelter ride of will we wont we go bust has sorted of already changed into when will we go bust and how exactly will this occur? What will happen once we have declared bankruptcy? Because, now, that we already are bankrupt but have not yet acknowledged it, the government?s ?answer? has been to announce a ludicrous, sadistic and totally unrealistic barrages of taxes, which is quite obvious will lead to nowhere, since anyway there is absolutely no possibility that there will be any money left to pay the goddam taxes.

However, if capitalism has proved to be a vulnerable little creature (and certainly not something to be left to the capitalists, like war and the generals? there is a lot of wisdom there) it has also throughout its life so far proved to be very resilient and adaptable.

Our last hope now is that perhaps the European motley lot from ECB to Commission and above all Frau Merkel herself, will eventually see the folly of this policy of austerity and punishment and perhaps get around to the so called ?Marshall Plan? idea that has been suggested from the European Investment Bank. After all no growth no money and no money no repayment and no repayment under such a policy will not be just from one naughty country but from others too. This and can be avoided and quite easily. If only there were enough guts to go around, which, at the moment there aren?t. To make things worse the Greek so called government is not only totally lacking in guts but also in brains.

So all we can hope and pray for is the resilience of capitalism to show its face and for God?s sake, when and if that does happen, PLEASE keep the capitalists on a short leash!

A little old lady, with no formal higher education (but an immense informal one) and endowed with a great dose of simple common sense, went to the LSE and inquired nicely why it was that the best and the greatest in Economic thought had not predicted the credit crunch. As expected in this age of meaningless spin, the answer from the wisest and greatest was a fudge. ?A failure of the collective imagination?, the ?psychology of denial? etc. etc. and more meaningless words and phrases, all designed to avoid the obvious answer (we got it all terribly wrong for all the wrong reasons, perhaps). The Guardian goes on to tell us that this little old lady went on to summon the Governor of the Bank of England to inquire what he was doing to tackle the recession. More common sense in a simple question. Questions that no one who should, seems to be even asking. We all know the story of the little boy who shouted ?But the King has no clothes!!!? What a wonderful reverse of roles when it is the Queen in her despair (reflecting that of all of us) who has to ask politely, ?Just where are your clothes gentlemen? I was under the impression that you were all so fancily dressed.? What can I say? Hurrah for the Queen of England!

This was prompted by an article in the Guardian Weekly a few weeks ago informing us of the Queen’s visit to the LSE, her simple yet pertinent question and the answer you would expect from this bunch of wild eyed fanatical born again free market economist. Heaven help us!

About this time last year I was in Los Angeles. Staying with a very good friend who was a Getty scholar at the time. When I asked her which buses or trains perhaps served the area, she quite rightly looked blank and admitted she didn’t have a clue. But Ah! She said, I have a British colleague and he can tell you all about routes and how to use the buses. And he did indeed. Adding that here, public transport was only used by the unemployed and academics. After having used the splendid service the City of Los Angeles does in fact provide, I had to correct him. It wasn’t the unemployed, it was those in domestic service, and visiting academics that used public transport. Now, a year late, having moved to a northern residential suburb in Athens, I have discovered the same thing. We might just as well be in Los Angeles here too. The buses are only used by domestic help… I don’t know of any visiting academics, but maybe I should add to the list, those who grew up in London.

Okay, so we’re back in business (I hope). Quite a madhouse with plumbers bashing down bits of wall all over the place, and painters painting them up again. BUT we are thereby doing our bit to get the economy going again. Now, though everywhere else a great effort is being made to provide the middle classes with greater liquidity so that we can spend our way out of the recession, here in Greece we are being taxed and taxed and taxed some more because we have an enormous deficit hole to fill. However, how can you tax more when people are earning less? Now, the intricacies of the Greek Economy are such that nothing ever works as it’s supposed to. That is because we have an enormous black economy (bequeathed to us from the Nazi occupation when this pursuit began to thrive) so those who get taxed, are those who are honest, have nothing to do with the black economy and earn so much less than those who get away with murder, just about (and sometimes literally too). Which means, that any Minister of the Economy can do very little. Unless he tackles the real problem, which they rarely do. Why? Well, because as recent scandals of the current government indicate, these Ministers often form the very core of this black economy. We even had one ex Minister bragging that he used off shore companies to avoid paying tax, which, he rightly said, was a perfectly legal thing to do. As to the morality of the situation? Ah. He had an answer for that too. Whatever is not illegal is moral too.

I have just moved to my new home, which used to be my old home! I am so happy! I have to do some repairs, but it’s a very pretty house!

The picture above, is not the way to my house, but it’s a pretty picture all the same!

Here we are. Let`s see now. I`m having a problem with my apostrophes. Let`s see if this works!

?Does anyone remember Vera Lynn?? A line made memorable by Pink Floyd in The Wall. But I didn?t know that some twenty odd years ago when I was living in a tiny village on the southern coast of the island of Crete opposite Libya. My younger son turned to me at some point and mentioned Vera Lynn in relation to something we were talking about. Vera Lynn? I looked at him in utter astonishment. How could you possibly know Vera Lynn? Though the blue skies over the white cliffs of Dover and all that that meant were very well known to me, having grown up in London in the fifties, I couldn?t for the life of me imagine just where he might have heard of her. I was very impressed and perhaps a touch nostalgic too. The very mention of her name reminded me of my childhood, my father, who had been an officer in the Greek Navy and had served with the British, whom he admired and appreciated ever more. He would have been one to remember Vera Lynn. But not this little guy, decades later on the southernmost tip of Europe. Though perhaps the very fact that we were there might have prompted us to wonder where we might have been, if at all, had it not been for Vera Lynn and all those she sang for. Nevertheless, Vera Lynn is probably still remembered more thanks to The Wall, than to our grandfathers and great grandfathers, most of whom have already taken their leave and their memories with them too.
 Listening to a CD with such gems as ?Diamonds are a girls? best friend? and ?My heart belongs to daddy.? I thought, well. ?Does anyone remember Marilyn Monroe?? would probably give rise to hoots of laughter. Well of course we do! Everybody does! But then the CD also includes ?Happy Birthday Mr. President.? Ah! Now how many people actually remember that and what in meant? Not in retrospect (though even there it has probably faded to a threadbare grey if it?s even there at all) but in its ?real time? impact. So, what do we remember? An icon. A myth. A great entertainer? No. That?s going now, with the last dregs of the sixties survivors, sinking into crotchety senior citizenship and perhaps, already, Alzheimer?s. Marilyn Monroe? Who? Oh, that blonde whose frock got blown into the air. Some of us may also remember that Elton John?s song for Diana Princess of Wales requiem was originally written for Norma Jean, Monroe?s real name. I always did think this second handing was apt somehow. A song for another icon. But a second hand one. Not the original.