Greece is in a state of total collapse. The whole of the Eurozone isn’t really doing much better. Under the pretext, because pretext it is, of the inability of the Germans to form a government quite yet, nothing but nothing is being done. This should not simply be read as, oh the EU has degenerated into a German empire. It has and it hasn’t. But what about all those others responsible for taking decisions from the Commission to all the other heads of governments and states?
If the Germans have indeed taken advantage of this they can hardly be held solely responsible. Not least because what is being done will end up in disaster for Germany too. As it always invariably does.
At the moment in Greece there is the great big quibble over whether the so called “financing gap” will be 500 million Euro as the nondescript Minister of Finances maintains or a couple of billion as the nondescript troika experts maintain. Common sense alone tells us this is all nonsense. That the problem of Greece’s economy is completely different and will never be solved as long as austerity is continued and worsened by arguments over gaps and other such irrelevancies.
You don’t need to be an economist to realise that policies that have achieved almost 30% unemployment and have shrunk the economy by 25% will not help the economy to start producing, and if the economy does not start to produce then all this talk of financing gaps is up in the air. If you don’t make things you can’t sell. If you have nothing to sell then you won’t have any revenue. If you have no revenue, being given loans on condition of continuing this policy of austerity is not going to help anyone (not even the bankers!) is it?
The same holds for the whole of the Eurozone. Every little accounting figure that shows that perhaps over the last quarter things were not as bad as the previous one is pounced upon and paraded to show that “we’re out of recession”, “the worst is behind us” and all that nonsense. When again, the whole of the Eurozone economy is in bad shape. Even where unemployment is relatively low, poverty is high owing to low wages, labour “flexibility” and all that which only helps slash consumption.
But why is all this going on? Why has blind ideology prevailed? Why has no one stood up to shout that “the king has no clothes”!? Additya Chakrabortty in the Guardian tells us why.
“….. most of the major economics degree courses and neoclassical economics ? that theory that treats humans as walking calculators, all-knowing and always out for themselves, and markets as inevitably returning to stability ? remains in charge. Why? In a word: denial. The high priests of economics refuse to recognise the world has changed.”
“Economics ought to be a magpie discipline, taking in philosophy, history and politics. But heterodox approaches have long since been banished from most faculties, claims Tony Lawson. In the 1970s, when he started teaching at Cambridge, the economics faculty still boasted legends such as Nicky Kaldor and Joan Robinson. “There were big debates, and students would study politics, the history of economic thought.” And now? “Nothing. No debates, no politics or history of economic thought and the courses are nearly all maths.”
“How do elites remain in charge? If the tale of the economists is any guide, by clearing out the opposition and then blocking their ears to reality. The result is the one we’re all paying for.”
I urge you to read the whole article.