By Philip Pilkington, a journalist and writer living in Dublin, Ireland
The infernal hurricane that never rests
Hurtles the spirits onward in its rapine;
Whirling them round, and smiting, it molests them.
– Dante, The Divine Comedy
Every now and then a terrible thought enters my mind. It runs like this: what if the theatre of the Eurocrisis is really and truly a political power-game being cynically played by politicians from the core while the periphery burns?
Yes, of course, we can engage in polemic and say that such is the case. But in doing so we are trying to stoke emotion and generally allowing our rhetorical flourish to carry the argument. At least, that is what I thought. I had heard this rhetoric; I had engaged in it to some extent myself; but I had never really believed it. Only once or twice, in my nightmares, I had thought that, maybe, just maybe, it might have some truth.
And then the Financial Times published this ‘strictly confidential’ document leaked to them from within the Eurostructure. That is when my nightmare started becoming increasingly real.
The document is damning in that it fully recognises what many of us have been saying for months: namely, that the austerity measures in the periphery are not going to produce an outcome favourable to anyone. The document focuses on Greece, but the implications of what it reports regarding the experiment currently taking place there have implications for all the countries currently looking down the barrel of austerity.
Take growth rates, for example. Before this document emerged the Troika’s estimates were fairly robust. It was assumed that if the profligates swallowed their austerity medicine they would soon be back on the road to recovery. Not so anymore. In the leaked document Greece’s economy is expected to contract 5.5% in 2011 and a further 3% in 2012. In 2013 it assumes Greece will start growing again – by a meagre 1.25%. She will go on to grow a further 2.66% from 2015-2020. For the decade after that – between 2021 and 2030 – growth is expected to be a measly 1.66%.
These projections are actually overly optimistic. They assume that structural reforms will actually promote growth while, in reality, they will probably exacerbate deflationary pressures. But even if we take these figures at face value the message is clear: Greece is going to be in the toilet for the next twenty years if the current policies are adhered to.
The report goes on to suggest that proceeds from the privatisation drive (read: asset-stripping) will be much lower than anticipated. It also suggests that Greek access to normal channels of market-based financing will be greatly delayed and that government surpluses in the coming years will be below target. (Again, on this latter point the report is probably being far too optimistic in its assessment).
The conclusions the report draws from this are stark:
Under these assumptions, Greece’s debt peaks at very high levels and would decline at a very slow rate, pointing to the need for further debt relief to ensure sustainability.
Greek government debt, the report says, “would peak at 186 percent of GDP in 2013 and decline only to 152 percent of GDP by end-2020 and to 130 percent of GDP by end-2030.”
Oh dear. That doesn’t sound good at all. Under these assumptions (again, overly optimistic, in my view) Greece would not return to the markets until 2021!
The report then goes on to discuss private sector haircuts of anywhere up to 60%. Ouch!
Here is the key point though: the report essentially states that the current austerity measures are going to butcher the Greek economy. Even if haircuts are taken – and even if these work in bringing down the debt load, which is a big ‘if’ – the Greek economy is assumed to be in for two decades of sluggish growth. (Once again, I’ll point out that, as far as I can see, even this pessimistic report remains too optimistic in this regard).
That leads to the obvious question: do the Eurocrats know all this? Before it was always implicitly assumed that they did not. It was assumed that they were simply deluded about economic recovery in the periphery; not bloody-minded about the implications of austerity. But now we have to question this narrative.
Hence, my nightmare becomes ever more real. What this report suggests is that the Eurocrats know well what they are doing. They are imposing destructive austerity measures – and, let us be frank, pointless asset-stripping drives – on the periphery knowing full well what effect these are going to have.
So, why are they doing this? Well, in light of current evidence we should raise the unpleasant question: is there not the chance that this is really a cynical power-grab? The elites in the core countries have found their political status boosted immeasurably by the present crisis. They will moan that this crisis is awful, of course, but secretly they must know that it is upping their political profile immeasurably and putting them in important decision-making positions.
And so, what if we are moving into a situation where the Eurocrats establish an iron-grip on the periphery through financing arrangements that essentially allow them full control over the imposition of highly destructive economic policies?
Here’s how I see this nightmare scenario unfolding:
Firstly, it is becoming increasingly recognised – most notably by the French and the IMF – that, in order for the Eurozone financial system to regain a modicum of stability, the ECB must step in and back the EFSF. In essence, the ECB must become a sort of unofficial ‘Lender of Last Resort’. If this situation comes about, the Eurocrats will have the ‘unlimited firepower’ – that is, the ECB’s ability to issue currency – with which they can essentially control the bond markets.
If the Eurocrats find themselves in this position they may well opt to keep the periphery bond markets on life support while continuing to insist on austerity… all the while, fully acknowledging – as laid out above in the secret document – what this austerity will mean in real terms: perpetual and unending suffering in the periphery.
Thus the Eurocrisis will be a financial crisis no more. Instead what we will have is the core countries tightening the vice of austerity on the imploding periphery. As can clearly be seen from the projections in the document discussed above, there will be no endgame here and this situation will carry on indefinitely. The periphery will find themselves caught up in a Dantean hell, not unlike the one portrayed by the great Irish writer Flann O’ Brien in his book The Third Policeman:
He said it was again the beginning of the unfinished, the rediscovery of the familiar, the re-experience of the already suffered, the fresh-forgetting of the unremembered. Hell goes round and round. In shape it is circular and by nature it is interminable, repetitive and very nearly unbearable.
The breaking point will then have to be both political and local. Somewhere in the periphery the population will eventually have enough of this perverse spiral and some sort of political event will break the destructive cycle.
Sounds good, right? Well, maybe not. Let us assume that the breaking point occurs in Greece, which it probably will as Greece is already beginning to look ungovernable. Well, Greece has an interesting political history in this regard. On the one hand, Greece has a history of radicalism – remember, the country almost had a Communist revolution after WWI. But – as is so often the case in countries with a strong radical tradition – Greece also has a tendency toward authoritarian rule, having spent years under a military dictatorship.
Given these dynamics it is not unlikely that the impetus for shrugging off the yoke comes from the hard left. With the soft left already in power and sending the country to hell in a hand basket, the far left will probably look increasingly attractive to the average Greek citizen.
But what if these far left stirrings then, as they so often have in history, summon into being the demonic forces of authoritarianism that ruled over Greece not so long ago? Then we could be looking at something like a military coup d’etat and a new military-backed dictatorship.
This is all speculation, of course, and should be taken as such. But the document leaked from within the structures of Europower strongly suggests that the Eurocrats know exactly what they are imposing on the periphery. This further indicates that, come hell or high water, they are going to stick to their guns regarding austerity. Assuming that this state of affairs is not going to last for two decades or more, the game-change is then sure to come from within the periphery countries.
Last time we saw such austerity policies being forcibly imposed on a country within Europe – I refer, of course, to the debt extractions that took place after WWI – we got Hitler. Greece, of course, is far too small a country to produce a Hitler. But that is not to say that it could not produce something a little smaller, but for that, no less dangerous to the Greek people. A Pinochet, for example. What we might be seeing gathering around certain peripheral countries right now is nothing less than forces that might threaten their democracies.
The Eurocrats, who can now be assumed to be very much ‘in the know’ with regards austerity and where it will lead, had better wake up and smell the coffee. For this nightmare is becoming increasingly real by the day.
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I have no doubt the Eurocrats know very well where it is leading. The problem is they haven’t a clue what else to do so can only try to keep the lid on it long enough for someone else’s face to be in the frame when the s**t really hits the fan.
I’m sure than in the Middle Ages many physicians and apothecarys were only too aware than continuing to apply leeches and the scalpel to their patients was going to kill them. Their problem was that bleeding was the only remedy that accorded with their understanding of how the human body worked and the possibility that their understanding might be wrong was simply impossible to contemplate let alone admit.
They know full well that they could print money as an alternative to destructive austerity. This whole time I’ve been thinking to myself, “Man, a lightbulb is eventually going to go off here eventually – it has to – and Europe is going to get it’s shit together, stop the austerity non-sense and print its way out.” This post goes a way to explaining why they’re not going that route.
The assertion here is that they will print money and impose austerity, not as an alternative.
From the post above:
If this situation comes about, the Eurocrats will have the ‘unlimited firepower’ – that is, the ECB’s ability to issue currency – with which they can essentially control the bond markets.
If the Eurocrats find themselves in this position they may well opt to keep the periphery bond markets on life support while continuing to insist on austerity…
I am inclined to agree that they haven’t a clue what to do.
Otherwise, I assume they’ve identified a few potential candidates for promotion as the newest Mediterrenean dictator. We shouldn’t worry too much if they are really that competent.
But they are not that competent. And that’s why we have to be concerned.
I have myself taken the time to publish several late medieval medical texts. You might take some of your time to read one or two.
That fits in quite nicely with Michael Hudson’s
prediction that if the Greeks and others on the
periphery go for the “austerity” and other
hair extensions on the debt head, instead of the
haircuts, there will be a lost generation of Greeks
who will lose all the gains made since WWII.
Look for the article on Argentina elsewhere in Naked Capitalism. Haircuts are still better for bankers
than guillotines.
Jeff said: “Haircuts are still better for bankers than guillotines.”
That is why I see this as a simple crisis of public will. Simple in the sense that it seems obvious to me that the world’s governments for the most part are under the spell of the global inherited rich, the wannabees and their hired sociopaths.
If the rest of us in the world expressed a strong clear statement of public will, we could easily tell those folks that current international debt is coming out of their holdings and we are going top develop a socio-economic system that has a better balance of sharing, compassion, cooperation in relation to competition.
Am I the only one stupified by watching 99% of the world population be totally cowed by a small group of other humans?
The global inherited rich pull the EU puppets strings just like they do in the US and many other countries in our world. Is that not obvious by this point?
Laugh the global inherited rich out of control of our society and into rooms at the Hague. Prosecuting them will give us clarity on what sort of society we don’t want going forward.
Everyone wants to believe it will get better and we are censured into it. For example, as soon as one mentions Hitler, one is ridiculed…
We should be talking to those who saw things unravel in other times and situations and ask for their input.
Much of what is going on now could be forseen. I for one started talking about it in 2002. I have a good reputation in finance of resurrecting the dead but people still laughed at me (except in one case where I had a rather good conversation with a 60 odd year old Harvard MBA running a large insurance company). People do not want to stop believing that the last 60 was real.
In fact it is no more real that Santa or the Easter Bunny.
The only thing I failed to see when this started was how corrupt the elected politicians are and the Fed. I marked it up to naiveness. Not true they know and it is corruption. I now believe you need to prepare for the worse. The 1% will not release their grip.
But of course they know it is unreal and the evidence is the derivatives market. 600T in derivatives which serve as an insurance policy on whatever the fantasy system has spawned. Some are now saying it is a 1.4 quadrillion derivatives market. I mean, it’s sad really – nobody has a clue how to make it right so they take out insurance.
Wise comments, thanks Ishmael.
Indeed there will be violence (mostly from top to bottom) and suffering but that’s how revolutions happen, sadly enough. People will become more and more aware as this neofascist repression falls upon them and their acquaintances.
In the long run the 1% can’t hold power. They want to, they hope that just being stubborn and ultra-greedy is enough but they really lack any sort of plan. And without a workable plan they can’t win.
Read my lips: total control is impossible, it goes against the laws of Thermodynamics and Chaos. Things change.
Yes, things always change. But this time is a little different. The neofascist evilgelicals will have more power due to the weapons advancement of the past 60 years and more rigid control due to more complete information on the populace thanks to computers. It will take 1,000 years for the 99% to do the work of revolution accomplished by 5 years work 100 years ago.
éirígí
You see the glass almost empty but I see it almost full instead. I have been following carefully the historical accumulation of forces for this showdown since the 1980s and and I think that the technological advances favor in general more the Popular-Revolutionary camp than the Oligarchic-Fascist one.
In spite of computers and such (or actually thanks to them), the ability of institutions to impose discipline and control information was almost infinitely greater in the 1930s (in the period of Fordism or mass worker) than today (late Toyotism, social worker). Computers may process a lot of data at light speed but without people to process the results and refine the methods, all that is just junk.
Also haven’t wee just seen once and again the collapse of the totalitarian regimes even in the periphery? Egypt, the USSR, the Latin American juntas, South African Apartheid… They fell because they were Fordist: anti-cooperative, hierarchical, authoritarian, rigid, bureaucratic. And they lacked feedback to fine-tune the system and avoid to at least some extent corruption, stagnation or snowballing of problems.
When you start lying systematically and do not allow feedback to correct such lies (the propaganda and the adulation), the maladjustment with reality soon becomes too great and the system falls.
Actually that is what is happening in the West now, because the mainstream media and the control methods like elections, parliaments, tribunals… are failing to perform their designed roles and have become mere adulatory corrupt facilitator bureaucracies.
Total control is impossible and in fact all attempts to achieve it backfire by disaffecting the populace. Do you think that the humilliating controls at US airports help any kind of police purpose? No they only make people angrier and disaffected with the system.
Disaffected populations either revolt or facilitate the work of external foes or both.
“It will take 1,000 years for the 99% to do the work of revolution accomplished by 5 years work 100 years ago”.
Nope. Today change is faster in fact.
The main obstacle is consciousness and for that some have been working in the shadows for decades, all their lives possibly: to keep a flame of consciousness alive in the midst of the Big Bubble craze. 20 years ago these people would work a lot to reach to a few, mostly locally. Today they can work little in comparison and reach to all Earth in seconds (assuming a lingua franca like English, but also from language to language…).
Who can control that? Nobody! It’s impossible.
I couldn’t agree more. It would only take a few high profile arrests and the bankers at least would cave. It makes me so angry that Paulson and friends were in charge after Lehman – they had every investment banker by the balls that day and they did nothing. Nothing will change until we make it possible for politicians to get elected without needing vast amounts of cash. Until that happens every politician is bought and paid for.
“But what if these far left stirrings then, as they so often have in history, summon into being the demonic forces of authoritarianism that ruled over Greece not so long ago? Then we could be looking at something like a military coup d’etat and a new military-backed dictatorship.”
But this is the point.
Strategy of Tension: “The strategy of tension (Italian: strategia della tensione) is a theory that describes how world powers divide, manipulate, and control public opinion using fear, propaganda, disinformation, psychological warfare, agents provocateurs, and false flag terrorist actions.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_of_tension
Does the Devil ever catch a cold (and have his devious schemes foiled)?
The assumption has always been that Murphy’s Law doesn’t apply to your opponents, that they never have any setbacks.
Maybe sometimes those bad things are not planned…not always.
It smells like another dinner of disaster capitalism. Just sayin.’
For those who like their Dante served neat. In Europe as in America or China, it has always been about the looting. The aim is not to fix or avoid crashes. While the failure to do these things harms the 99%, as 2008 showed us, the power and position of the 1% are enhanced by disaster. This leak simply pulls aside the cheap fictions the elites use to control the rubes. And by the way this is the reason why they do not fear the 99%. We are and always will be rubes for them. Rubes are by definition manipulable and what can be manipulated is not to be feared.
If you want to make allusions to Dante’s Inferno, I would suggest Circle 8 Fraud with its 10 subdivisions or bolgias:
Bolgia One: Panderers and Seducers (the media)
Bolgia Two: Flatterers (Lobbyists)
Bolgia Three: Simoniacs (Buyers of political office)
Bolgia Four: Sorcerers and False Prophets (Economists, Academics)
Bolgia Five: Corrupt Politicians (self-explanatory)
Bolgia Six: Hypocrites (Establishment liberals)
Bolgia Seven: Thieves (Wall Street)
Bolgia Eight: Evil Counselors (Rubin, Emanuel, Summers, Geithner, Immelt, etc.)
Bolgia Nine: Sowers of Discord (Wagers of Class Warfare for the 1%)
Bolgia Ten: Alchemists and Counterfeiters (Bankers, Bernanke, the Fed, and creators of innovative financial products like CDS)
Bravo, Hugh! Splendid rendering of Inferno 2.0! +666
“Papé Satàn, papé Satàn aleppe!”
Hear Hear!
Dear Hugh;
Wonderful!
All that is old will be new again.
Bravo!
The eternal question: Are the elites stupid and/or evil? Pilkington seems to be going with evil.
Bolgia Nine:
Sowers of Discord (Wagers of Class Warfare for the 1%)
I’d revise to:
Sowers of Discord (Mainstream economists, legacy party members, political consultants and pollsters, think tanks, lobbyists, paid trolls, and our famously free press).
But evil has two possibilities:
1) They are deliberately destroying Greece.
2) They are callously accidentally destroying Greece as a by-product of playing it from one scam to another.
They can not be as stupid as would be necessary, but my vote is with 2) not 1).
I posted this in May 2010 as a gag and then once more months later. This is the last time I’ll post it, I promise. ;)
My translation of one of Dante’s scenes, I forgot which one, into contemporary English (I think I plagiarized some of it). Notice the classic mostly 10-beat meter! but the intonations are not as smooth as Dante’s Italian, forsure. ha hahahah ahahah 2 much fun.
* * *
This way and that, along the burning rocks
I saw horned demons armed with great whips,
Who cruelly beat those fallen from the pain.
Shit! how they made them wrench and pump their legs
with such fast strikes! and truly not a chance
to get a moment’s rest between the blows.
While I was going on, my eyes saw one
and he saw me; and I said: “Already
With the sight of you I need to puke my lunch.”
But still I held my ground to make him out,
And with me, my sweet Guide came to a stand,
And agreed to my going somewhat back;
And he, the whipped one, tried to hide himself,
Lowering his face, but little it disguised him;
For I said: “You that castest down your eyes,
If the features beneath your scars are true,
Then you are J.B. Banker to Sovereing States;
But what deed brings you to such torments?”
And he to me: “Unwillingly I tell this;
But forces here make me speak the truth,
Which custom rarely graced me in the world above.
I was the one who led the deal that made
a knot of lies and frauds from simple loans
and brought Europe to a breaking point of debts.
but I’m not the only banker who weeps here;
No, rather is this place so full of them,
That not so many tongues to-day are taught
from Hamburg to Savena to say ‘borrow’
And if you want a certain pledge or proof,
Make it one in taxes and in human bondage.”
While speaking in this manner, with his whip
A demon struck him, and said: “Get thee gone
Banker, there are no nations here to loot!”
Then I went ahead and joined my Guide again;
Thereafterward with a few steps we came
To where a crag projected from the bank.
This very easily did we ascend,
And turning to the right along its ridge,
From those eternal circles we departed.
There is, however, one small garden devoted to those who dare to tell a woman what to wear.
Yet nearly everyone still thinks we need banks.
We don’t. Hint: Usury concentrates wealth; common stock “shares” it.
We don’t need Communism; we need “Common-stock-ism”.
“You shall not charge interest to your countrymen: interest on money, food, or anything that may be loaned at interest”.
“You may charge interest to a foreigner, but to your countrymen you shall not charge interest, so that the LORD your God may bless you in all that you undertake in the land which you are about to enter to possess.” Deuteronomy 23:19-20 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
Yes if only we had real life examples of fairies we could bring about a Kingdom of Gondor on earth.
No appeals to fairies is necessary. Usury is mathematically unsustainable since the debt normally compounds faster than real growth.
Also, no less a Progressive than Dr. Michael Hudson has called for debt forgiveness which would be in accord with Deuteronomy 15.
The Bible is not much concerned with “fairies”. It is concerned with truth, justice, mercy, kindness, forgiveness, etc.
Oh contraire, its about who gets your soul, in a game of whom is talking to you in your head.
Is it:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Kircher-Diagram_of_the_names_of_God.png
or
the morning star[?]:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucifer
Skippy…any way one is the universes best liar and the other leaves it to the imperfect to figure it all out, your souls future depending on it all….sheez.
This is so clearly a ‘colonialization’ of Mediterranean Europe (and Ireland, and watch your back) under a financial pretext (and with the complicity of the local political and capitalist classes). While the Greek case and to some extent the Italian one have indeed some real background issues, the crisis in Iberia or Ireland is totally artificial.
As you seem to have discovered now, the eurocrats (and that include national political classes and leaders and also those across the sea, IMF, Wall Street, White House, etc. and with a notable role of Sarkozy and Merkel) have a plan to demolish the economies of peripheral zones to make them more colonial and that way finance the center for longer. If by sacrificing Greece (and if Greece is not enough Italy or whatever) they can keep the German economy and specially the banking speculative business alive for a couple of years longer, they will do no doubt.
And states in the eurozone are totally trapped unless they’d be willing to print euros on their own (they actually do it, they’d only need to ignore Burssels’ directives) or threaten to kick Germany off the EU (or something like that). But in any case no Mediterranean state has a political class able to hold their ground even a bit in front of the big transnational Capital which foots their electoral bills.
There will be no military governments: that would be suicidal. But there may be localized conflicts like pushing Turkey against Greece (maybe with a Cypriot pretext) if Greece refuse to submit to Franco-German imperialism in the near future.
Harder would be if the revolution advances into Italy or Spain: these are too-big-to-invade states. However there is a clear rise of fascism and that can be used, under a Honduras-style pseudo-democracy cover-up, to spread terror against the People big way.
Potentially… only potentially. Because what I see is just a suicidal path that will end in continental or global revolution. Maybe not yet but in 10 years or so almost for sure.
The oligarchs are trying to revive old parasitic colonialist recipes against the working classes of the Center, at a time when the classical periphery (BRIC and such) becomes more and more independent in a context of de-localization of Capital. This is a bomb about to explode and the sudden “Occupy”/”Indignant”/”99%” movement is just a symptom of how fast can things revolve (rather than just anymore evolve gradually).
The plundering goes ahead without any scruples but for how long? How much will the people be able to put up with? Not much: you can’t live in slums in Europe: it’s not just too cold, it’s illegal. The people have no exit, not even the “slumization” kind of false exit.
They can only kill themselves (or die as homeless in a slightly longer agony) or revolt. Logically most will chose the second, specially if the conditions are even slightly favorable.
Greeks could print their own Euros? That’s a very interesting idea, and would put the cat among the pigeons for sure. I’m not sure where the actual printing plants are, though. This map:
http://www.bundesbank.de/bargeld/bargeld_faq_eurobanknoten.en.php#euro_print
seems to think that banks do the printing. Surely not. From Wikipedia, sigh:
The printer code need not coincide with the country code, i.e. notes issued by a particular country may have been printed in another country. The printers include commercial printers as well as national printers, some of whom have been privatized, who previously produced national notes prior to the adoption of the euro. There is one former or current national printer in each of the note-issuing country, with the exception of Germany, where the former East German and West German printers now produce euro banknotes. There are also two printers identified in France, F. C. Oberthur, a private printer, and the Bank of France printing works, and also in the United Kingdom; Thomas De La Rue, a major private printer, and the Bank of England printing house, which currently does not produce euro banknotes.[19]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_banknotes
Stpeheny Griffith-Jones mentioned to me at a conference the other day that European central banks create their own reserves, or at least, that’s what one of her colleagues told her. I don’t believe it. I’d say there’s some catch to it if it is true.
The word ‘counterfeit’ comes to mind. And not in a throwaway sense. I mean it. Imagine if Greece exited the Euro and, as its currency dropped in value, printed up dollars instead. That sounds like something that would go on in the Bermuda Triangle on a skull-shaped island… inhabited by pirates. Actually… that is starting to sound increasingly attractive…
‘something that would go on in the Bermuda Triangle on a skull-shaped island… inhabited by pirates’
Why think so small? It can be done by a country the size of North Korea, which does exactly this.
The catch is that cash is just a small part of all real money today. So if Greece or whoever wants to escape the death trap of the multinational banksters, it would need to print brutal amounts of cash and pay all in cash, what is unrealistic.
But it could pay salaries and some supplies in cash and that way avoid the worst part of a bankruptcy: loss of the bureaucratic, police and military apparatus. It could also pay in cash to middlemen to operate bank accounts in tax heavens. €500 notes are technically legal (though normally undesirable) and you can put many millions in a handbag with those.
“The word ‘counterfeit’ comes to mind”.
Surely it would cause more than just raised eyebrows elsewhere in Europe: they’d kick Greece out of EU altogether or even intervene militarily maybe. But otherwise, and specially if many and larger, more powerful, states are brought to the same no-exit situation…
Are they going to invade Italy? I seriously doubt it: too big and it can become too crazy in the peninsula and in the center as people rise up in protest.
If states would be willing to reach so far, Germany would be the one quitting the EU… and the value of the euro would collapse quickly (what in my opinion is good).
An issue I did not account for is that most of the money mass is not anymore cash but is in fact created by banks in accountancy books out of thin air (mostly private banks thanks to extremely generous regulations), and Greece (or any other state bank) can only print cash. Also there’d be serious issues with Brussels and the other members, specially those who favor a strong euro like Germany.
Notice how we are already de facto in a right-wing-libertarian “utopy” in which only private actors, banks, have effective control of the economy and states are mere puppets – or almost so.
And we all know what this means ultimately: Somalia!
This continues the theme started by psychohistorian comments and those following him/her. The 1% dominating the so-called democracies, Europe and America, have drunk the death serum. They really believe that God has blessed them forever and everybody else, i.e. 99%, is cursed forever to work in the stables. Austerity is, therefore, the best way to impose God’s will and a true solid order.
Greece is unlucky since its kleptomania is well established and the country has no production means. But Spain, Italy, Ireland and whoever is circling the drain are is much better shape. They should revolt against the 1% and the Euro financial oppressors.
We in the US should join the OWS and make it into a wall to wall front repossessing our stolen treasures from the 1% robbers.
The problem is NOT what the 1% believes, if anything at all (probably just in money and having a good time no matter what), the problem is what the 99% believes that makes them so sheepishly.
Religion is one of the opiums of the people, there are others: consumerism, individualism, TV, desperation, isolation, ignorance…
The objective conditions for revolution are already here (or will be in a matter of years no doubt), the key problem is the subjective conditions: class consciousness (now coalescing) and class organization (still very weak).
“”What this report suggests is that the Eurocrats know well what they are doing. They are imposing destructive austerity measures – and, let us be frank, pointless asset-stripping drives – on the periphery knowing full well what effect these are going to have.
So, why are they doing this? “”
Peak oil and the end of growth that will lead to the implosion of the fractional reserve banking system.
Conclusion of the 2005 Hirsch Report commissioned by the Energy Department and presented to Congress.
“”The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem. As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented.””
US War College Report
“”LTC Fleming concludes, “The synchrony of unprecedented low production variance, unprecedented high price variance, and the number of peak oil forecasts in the range of 2005 to 2010 provide strong evidence that, regardless of price pull, geological factors could be presently limiting world oil production” “”
The Bundeswehr Report (German Military)
“”A series of interrelated potential consequences is then outlined:
– Collapse of the banking system, the stock & financial markets.
– Loss of confidence in currencies.
– Collapse of value-added chains.
– Collapse of monetary systems and international supply chains.
– Extreme increase in unemployment in all modern societies.
– State bankruptcy.
– Collapse of critical infrastructure.
– Famine.””
In short politicians in the US, UK and the EU are and will protect the wealth and power of the plutocracy at the expense of their countries. They are using “Disaster Capitalism” to initiate economic suppression while they pillage and loot the common weal (especially cuts to social programs) attempting to turn their governments into tax collectors from the citizenry who will be debt serfs under the burden of sovereign debt …
One thing not talked about very much is Greece’s oil and natural gas wealth which it has not developed. Supposedly located on/around its various islands? In a global context it could make sense that this “austerity” is the result of peak oil. Europe just pillaged Libya for oil security. Gee, I guess a big derivative bet just couldn’t cut it. Too bad for the banksters. So if Greece doesn’t develop its resources, Europe will, by forcing them to disgorge their property. But this still doesn’t explain how it all turned into such a fiasco and so suddenly…. unless we, the US, finally told our cousins that we would no longer insure their oil supplies. What else could have finally gotten NATO off the dime.
I don’t think Greece has any oil and gas wealth to speak of. Surely being so close to markets it would have been discovered and developed by now.
I think it is a mistake to impute too much intentionality to the 1%. They are not some deviously powerful force. They are an opportunistic infection.
Each fragment of the 1% is looting as much as it can for as long as it can. That is all. The fragments manage, barely, to coordinate with each other enough to ensure that any solutions tried are exclusively at the expense of the 99%. But it is not that they have a long-term plan or really any plan at all. Just one maneuver after another to keep the scam running a bit longer. Even if those maneuvers can easily be seen to be bad even for the long-term existence of the 1%.
There are surely two kinds. There are indeed the devilish plotter kind, or haven’t you watched that Hollywood classic “Wall Street”? There’s people who are playing kingmaker and powermonger in that elite, of course, and to some extent at least all the members of that elite do, otherwise they’d have been stripped from their wealth long ago.
Whatever the case, they do concentrate the power and as such power holders they have a responsibility: they must deliver well being to society as a whole. If they do not deliver the People will be very upset and may get to sharpen the guillotine again. That is what is happening right now.
My friends, the eurocrats know full well what they are doing. But let’s be clear: this is not about paying back the loans. It is all about a land grab. Mediterranean land grab, that is. You know, the sunny, warm climate, palm tree lined kind of land grab.
The only problem is that the afore-mentioned palm tree lined land is inconveniently already populated by these unruly, temperamental, nationalistic Greeks who thus far have exhibited no willingness or desire to learn German or French. So, let me venture and say that within 24 months Greece will lead a Europe-wide insurrection against the imperialist Western Europe. Let me also venture to say that Greece will be backed by Mama Russia and Papa China in their struggle to overthrow the yoke of greed-crazed, corrupt capitalist Euro-American fat cats.
As such, while the eurocrats may know what they are doing, they are so drunken with the delusion of omnipotence. They forget that the road to hell is lined not with palm trees, but with the corpses of other similarly delusional tyrants like Gaddafi and Ceausescu.
Interesting! So…maybe the US succeeds in pushing Russia out of its last Med base in Syria only to watch Putin strike a deal for Piraeus? LOL.
Israel, as well… LOL
It is a superpower game. Russia is protecting its oil reserves in the Mideast and Siberia from both China and NATO; Europe is frantic because it really hasn’t succeeded in developing any oil fields; China is relentless because it hasn’t found any oil fields; we are busy shoring up the Saudis politically and ring fencing Iran. And have big awful plans to do shale and run a pipeline to Houston. One thing I don’t understand is, if Greece does have reserves, what is preventing Greece from selling oil concessions to China. That would pay back the rest of Europe in more ways than one.
I also do not understand why we simply don’t stop producing and driving cars.
Finally, mmckinl, speaks the truth that so many brilliant people who know the wheels are coming off but simply miss in their otherwise sophisticated analysis. Ray Dalio is his recent interview with Charlie Rose is one such example. Clearly he has got a lot of the details right but he suffers from the same myopia as that of our clueless ruling class (the military excepted, perhaps).
Seen through the lens of Chris Martenson’s Crash Course, the daily threads one finds on The Oil Drum or even “The Limits to Growth” from 1972 the turmoil we are experiencing in the economy and financial markets begins to make much sense.
Surely better to embrace collapse before it embraces you.
I think Westerners are still clueless. The 1% is screwing the 99% but the 99% is trying to screw the rest of the world. Our system is based on exploiting emerging markets and now we could include the European periphery.
A lot of pension funds with clout are underfunded and need returns. When growth is gone, what better way for a manager to solve his problem than by buying distressed assets below book? So of course the money managers are only salivating at the prospects of privatization they see coming down the road.
And this privatization orgy is not reserved to the 1% club. It’s to serve the 99% who expect SS to send them a monthly cheque they think they are entitled to. The promises to retirees are so high that in the absence of growth, we need to vultch.
But one day, the whoe thing WILL implode as entlitlements get cut or devalued whether we like it or not. There is not enough productivty out there for the promises that have been made.
Yeah, right. The promise to send the 99% fat retirement checks is the last thing on the minds of the 1% oligarchs.
What is far more likely to now keep the oligarchs up at night is scheming about how to entirely enslave the 99%, how to murder more of them in useless wars, and how to turn this entire planet into a 1% greed-inflicted wasteland.
And by the way, if possible, in your next post, please try to refrain from using the term “job creators”.
We now return you to your Fox and Friends program, already in progress.
You can see waht you want but the fact is that here in Canada, ALL the biggest public pension funds have been treaking their asset-mix to go to 5-10% infra over the next decade. Trust me, they will jump on distressed assets if they can.
We have the US, France and Germany who are still looking at keeping their public plans funded.
The 1% is a huge problem but once we’ve knocked them down, we’re going to realize that they still don’t have enough money to fund the promises that have been made to retirees.
You can see waht you want but the fact is that here in Canada, ALL the biggest public pension funds have been tweaking their asset-mix to go to 5-10% infra over the next decade. Trust me, they will jump on distressed assets if they can.
We have the US, France and Germany who are still looking at keeping their public plans funded.
The 1% is a huge problem but once we’ve knocked them down, we’re going to realize that they still don’t have enough money to fund the promises that have been made to retirees.
What these 99% movements envision is not how to return the current system to a state prior to 2008, rather how to replace it entirely. Capitalism, consumerism, banking, globalization, and this current form of democracy all need to go. Additionally, this fetish with growth needs to be replaced with the idea of development in sustainable and globally-equitable manner.
But you do have a good point in that the 99% (at least those from the so-called “developed” nations) have been indirectly screwing people in the developing nations. This is why I wrote that consumerism needs to go. So yes, the 99% camping out next to Wall Street need to be willing to give up their iPhones and their Northern Face jackets, and possibly think about joining a cooperative and contribute time and sweat in producing their own food.
Dear Psychoanalystus;
A quibble: How do iPhones constitute, in and of themselves, various applications are fair game I’ll admit, an excess of consumerism? Considering how data consentrated (sic) the ‘Moderne’ world is, they are an equivalent of electricity as motive force has been. An exchange of expense for infinitely greater returns. A new balance will require some truly serious debate. That’s assuming we can control the forces that are gathering for the feast.
I don’t own an iPhone (nor any other kind of mobile phone at the moment) and have no idea what is a Northern Face jacket. But I know this you mention is not the core of wasteful consume.
There’s been a fashion on blaming the final user, alias consumer, for all the waste of the Capitalist system. This is correct only very limitedly, maybe 10%, most of the waste is to blame to the industries and the lack of government regulation (not to mention wasteful public spending in military and such). If states would regulate economy so it’d be clearner, less wasteful and less oriented to pure selling of whatever, i.e. with an ideal socialist economy in which what matters is attending the basic needs with a plus (a plus for connectivity certainly, even if that means phones and computers: we need them for democracy and transparency, as well as for a well deserved leisure and much needed production also).
So yes: we must say NO to consumerism but that doesn’t mean we have to go back to the stone age because that is simply impossible. And it does mean that the whole economy must be regulated and planned differently, it’s not any mere individual aggregated choice: it’s collective decisions made through collective institutions such as governments or collectivized industries.
“What these 99% movements envision is not how to return the current system to a state prior to 2008, rather how to replace it entirely. Capitalism, consumerism, banking, globalization, and this current form of democracy all need to go. Additionally, this fetish with growth needs to be replaced with the idea of development in sustainable and globally-equitable manner.”
1. Thank you – YES;
2. See also: Contributionism;
3. See also: resource-based economy;
4. See also: zero-point energy (patents need to be released – many kept from being awarded under the excuse they are “national security risks” when what we know TPTB really mean is, “Since it’ll be clean, free energy that’s made available and hence, a profitless venture with no environmental trauma attached, we’re going to keep these designs and inventions from the public because we need to protect our transnational corporations [translate: oil and coal millionaire/billionaire buddies] while continuing to cling to power and control over the masses;
5. There are ways to live very well – while respecting and honoring the earth, each other, all life forms;
6. Anything else is no longer an option.
The fairytale for Monday, brought to you by Philip Pilkington.
Secret document leaked!…check.
Evil Eurocrats…check.
Iron grip…check.
Random reference to Hitler…check.
“Austerity is baaaad, spending is gooood”…check.
Thank you.
We now return you to your Goldman Sachs boot-lickers meeting, already in progress… You are now guaranteed a Christmas bonus of at least 20 bucks…LOL
I thought that said: “Austerity is bad, SPELLING is good”. I would have liked that. Unfortunately… not so original. Oh well.
My Good Dubliner;
I thought that was a reference to the old Saturday Night send up of Bush 41.
Que?
Mr Pilkington;
I’m sorry for the misplaced pop cultural reference. Whilst H.G.W.Bush was president here, the Saturday Night Live programme had a send up of him where one of the punchlines was him saying something like: “Weapons of mass destruction in Nebraska, gooood. Weapons of mass destruction in Alberta, baaaad. That’s baaaad, baaaad.” I believe it was Dana Carvey who did a spot on impersonation of the man.
Obscure references can indeed become too obscure. Keep up the good work.
Yr humble and obedient servnt; Ambrit.
Firstly, it is becoming increasingly recognised – most notably by the French and the IMF – that, in order for the Eurozone financial system to regain a modicum of stability, the ECB must step in and back the EFSF. In essence, the ECB must become a sort of unofficial ‘Lender of Last Resort’. If this situation comes about, the Eurocrats will have the ‘unlimited firepower’ – that is, the ECB’s ability to issue currency – with which they can essentially control the bond markets.
Well, simply printing money always is seen as the Real solution. IMO however, this is legalised theft and all those central bankers choosing this route belong behind bars. When year after year countries spend more than they take in, it is a matter of politicians to get their budgets in order and to cut expenses or raise taxes.
It is not a matter of choosing austerity, it is a matter of living within one’s means. We lived long enough at the expense of future generations and if history taught me correctly, it will never happen that the next generation will take on the debt of the prior generation.
We have been in the greatest debt bubble of maybe all times until 2007 and the deflation of debt will cause many problems over these coming years. We only just started the process of de-leveraging and already everyone talks how terrible the austerity is on people. Let me assure you, you have not seen anything yet. There is no easy way out of this situation but hopefully, we find real leaders who are able to communicate the problem properly and who have their countries at their heart and not their personal well-being and bring the sufficient integrity and idealism along for the difficult period ahead.
Never let a crisis go to waste must translate well from English
A jolt for those of us who thought Europe had managed to progress from its terrible, bloody and savage history of tribal, ethnic, religious, and national conflicts. Yes, there is no shooting war at the moment, but clearly the policies of Germany, France, and the hapless ECB are meant to immiserate, punish, injure and even kill southern Europeans, and their brethren on the peripheries (Ireland, Latvia, e.g.). Bankers rule is as oppressive, inhuman and anti-democratic as any other autocratic class.
I’ve always stated here and in other places that I always felt that Europe has never put its feudal tradition behind. All that “soft power” bullshit we kept hearing from the EU over the past 20 years was precisely that: bullshit.
Personally, I find Europe (and here I am referring to Western Europe) to be far, far more disgraceful, racist, and more perverse than America. All that they managed to produce was a thin veneer of civilization, underneath which there are mile-thick layers of barbarism and backwardness.
In my “professional” opinion Western Europe is clique of degenerates — all the good people that it produced in recent centuries have already emigrated to America (North and South) and Australia.
Take that, Sarkozy, you degenerate son of a bitch…LOL
Friedrich?
“The disease of the will is diffused unequally over Europe, it is worst and most varied where civilization has longest prevailed, it decreases according as “the barbarian” still—or again—asserts his claims under the loose drapery of Western culture It is therefore in the France of today, as can be readily disclosed and comprehended, that the will is most infirm, and France, which has always had a masterly aptitude for converting even the portentous crises of its spirit into something charming and seductive, now manifests emphatically its intellectual ascendancy over Europe, by being the school and exhibition of all the charms of skepticism…” — Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
Is Herr Nietzsche urging France to go back to her Neanderthal roots?
Sounds like he is advocating Neo-Neanderthalism.
“I’ve always stated here and in other places that I always felt that Europe has never put its feudal tradition behind. All that “soft power” bullshit we kept hearing from the EU over the past 20 years was precisely that: bullshit.”
WTF are you talking about. American yahoos are nowadays most bloodthirsty idiots on this planet. Always war on this and war on that. Not to even mention the gun fetish there.
“All that they managed to produce was a thin veneer of civilization, underneath which there are mile-thick layers of barbarism and backwardness. ”
HA HA HA! You really are an American, total ignoramus. You are an EPIC FAILURE, very rare specimen here but seen quite often in the US.
“In my “professional” opinion Western Europe is clique of degenerates — all the good people that it produced in recent centuries have already emigrated to America (North and South) and Australia.”
Is that professional idiot? Maybe you should compare the military budget of USA, Germany, France, Russia and China. Maybe that would ring a bell in your simplistic mind…
Ah well, you reacted like a typical European when your ego was being bruised by truth and facts.
Yes, I am American. I am also European, and I spend 6 or 7 months every year in Europe, so it would be safe to say that I understand both, America and Europe, quite well.
As far as the gun fetish in America and its arms dealings is concerned, perhaps you need to familiarize yourself a little better with the details of the massive arms dealings that France, Britain, and Germany are currently involved in.
And, as far as the past 50 or so years of American militarism, I am afraid that pales in comparison to the centuries upon centuries of war and genocide perpetrated by those paragons of “civilization” commonly known as France, Britain, Germany, Spain, Holland, Austria, all of which so happen to be located in Western Europe. But then again, history has always been slightly — just slightly — inconvenient to arrogant ignoramuses who would rather live in the delusional grandeur of their own making (I am referring to you, in case my irony here is just too subtle…LOL).
Oh, and one more thing, the only reason that Europe managed not to start another couple of world wars and somehow avoided sending a few more million people to death camps during these past few decades is simply because Europe was, since the end of WW2, occupied and dominated by the US. But now that the US is weak, I expect that cultured Western European motley crew of criminals to once again begin rounding up the usual genocide victims (gypsies, maybe Jews again, and definitely Greeks).
We now return you to your delusional life, already in progress…LOL
Have a nice day.
Well, Sarkosy is originally from Hungary.
I am surprised that some American talks about civilisation trying to imply that you might be in any superior position on that matter. Civilisation is a rather questionable term in itself and many people understand something different. It usually refers to the development stage of a country with regard to technological advances and similar material matters. The US may well be more advanced in the area of equipment to be used for war but overall, I do think, the US is probable on a similar level of civilisation as Europe.
The more intriguing question relates to culture. We have highly developed cultures of various origin here. This might as well apply to the US but it is much more on a personal level as most are some kind of Immigrants anyway over there. Whether to be rooted in a strong culture or not is a good or negative item is subject to opinion. It might depend on one’s own situation or experiences.
On one level I do agree, namely, to try to force all these different cultures and or countries to be united under one roof is rather counterproductive in my opinion. It does create more animosity than otherwise as on their own, each country has its own originality. United Europe is only a fiction by ambitious politicians who think we may somehow be more influential with a larger entity. Me for one prefer the way we in Switzerland handle the whole matter and reject joining the EU project.
By the way, many of us look at you over there as cow boys, slightly immature and short sighted and ready to shoot first and ask later.
“By the way, many of us look at you over there as cow boys, slightly immature and short sighted and ready to shoot first and ask later.”
FYI: I live in the U.S., and before commenting, looked up data (as much as I could find) re: how many of my fellow citizens do the gun thing. Impossible to locate consistent, accurate info; based on various sources, my best guess is, probably half of the adults in this country own firearms – many of them multiple times over (sigh).
But that also means: Half of us don’t.
So probably more of a split down the middle as far as those who shoot first and ask questions later (vs. those who don’t shoot at all because they wouldn’t even think of owning a gun).
Just a reminder: Those who shoot first and arm themselves to the teeth…are the most frightened people on earth. Really. People who threaten and wave rifles in the air and brag about how many bullets they can fire in ten seconds…are actually just plain scared. Very much operating out of survival brain mode.
Which is immature, yes. Short-sighted, yes. Cowboy-ish, yes. Because immaturity resides in the survival brain. As does short-sightedness. As does the cowboy mentality of bravado, swagger, prancing, making a show of oneself in order to establish dominance over others.
Yep, pure survival stuff.
Please know: Not everyone in the U.S. is like this, however. And we’re doing what we can here…to turn things around.
Oh, I forgot to mention: I am writing this from Paris, where I have been for almost 2 months now, and where I will spend the next 4 months. So, like I wrote above, I know Europe quite well, since I spend almost 6 months every year here. In my opinion, excerpt for things like a better medical system and a generally safer environment (unless you are in Marseilles or much of Italy and much of the UK) Europe is now just as shitty a place as the US has become.
The right to own arms is one of the wisest constitutional provisions of the USA. I say that from Europe.
The chances of having a fully illegitimate and anti-popular government with such a 50% of all people owning weapons is almost nil. Now they can go around it with the media and religion and other means of propaganda but an outright dictatorship? No way. A popular armed revolution? Possible and easier than anywhere in Europe.
I may not like a lot of other things from the USA but the right to have weapons is fundamental. It may be manipulated and end up as in Bosnia but in general it is a democratic trait, a guarantee of popular power, that the authorities can’t outright cross the People.
Same in Switzerland (but very few other countries).
@Barbyrah
Don’t generalize much about gun ownership?
Where I live in the upper Midwest, the vast majority of people own guns. It’s a rural and semi-rural area and people hunt extensively, but they rarely if ever hunt one another, and the crime rates and gun-violence rates here are probably on Scandinavian levels.
You should be aware of how your gun post sounds to these people–they are mostly democrats and hardly rightwing gun nuts, but posts like yours certainly play into that.
>> By the way, many of us look at you over there as cow boys, slightly immature and short sighted and ready to shoot first and ask later. <<
Really? Do you think that Americans are worse than… say, Anders Breivik? And he is from Norway, that pinnacle of European "civilization" and superior Arian genetic heritage…LOL
Or, what about that wonderfully "tolerant" Holland, where the whole nation somehow managed to made a 180 degree U-turn on tolerance and discrimination in less than 3 years. Now that's a record that even Texas could not match.
And, speaking of Holland, it remains Europe's greatest consumer of child pornography, human trafficking, prostitution, child sexual abuse, and all sorts of sexual perversions that America at least has laws against. Is pedophilia and sexual perversions a sign of superior European civilization too?
Switzerland, your country, too is lately showing increasing levels of intolerance and a return to its inevitable feudal mindset.
I have been a critic of both, Europe as well as America, and as a citizen of both I have a right to do so. However, developmentally speaking, I think most European nations are far more primitive and anchored into the Middle Ages than America is, possibly because America did not experience the Middle Ages or feudalism.
Now, as far as the existence of the European Union is concerned, any economist will tell you that the EU was Western Europe's last ditch attempt to avoid becoming third world. Without creating the EU, the tiny, weak, market and resource starved individual Western European nations have only one possible future: become and get used to being third world. So, to think that somehow the EU was a project of magnanimity is completely delusional.
Yet, because Western Europe could not help abusing others, as its habit formed over many centuries, it ripped off and plundered Eastern Europe and now it is attempting to plunder Greece and other weaker EU nations. The EU core is now trying to survive by canibalizing the weaker members. This will not work, as I suspect the EU will soon break up and Western EU nations will likely sink into global irrelevance.
And, if Western Europe somehow expects the US to save its ass again, think again. The US is far more likely to align with China, India, or other major rising powers, as it is now aligned militarily with Eastern Europe.
Bottom line: Europe is doomed, and it only has itself to blame for this.
You do realize there’s no such thing as a “European” identity, or even European citizenship, right? I get the feeling that you lived there up to age 5, then moved to the US, and never got around to noticing that there are in fact enormous cultural differences between the various European countries. Of course, you compensate for this by doing only reductionist analysis, in which you assume that there is such a thing as a “formative experience of feudalism”. (Having said that, what does child porn viewing have to do with Feudalism? And how do you weigh Breivik against the Unabomber?)
Anyway, you are of course allowed to voice your opinion both on the US and on “Europe”, but given that your analysis is so problematic, and seeing how you’re basically just throwing out as much excrement as you can think of, while your analysis isn’t worth the storage space it takes up, you should not be surprised that others take offense.
But what does this mode of “analysis” tell us when we apply it to the US, given that the founding of the US was made possible through the genocide/extermination of the original inhabitants (defended by invoking the right of “res nullius”) while its societal and economic success was in large part predicated upon the availability of enormous numbers of slaves? And what should we think of the fact that we could fairly argue that your civil war was fought over the right to exploit your African population either as slaves or as factory workers? Are you really so arrogant as to argue that this is a great improvement over the “feudal spirit” that determines “all Europeans?” Or do you just have an axe to grind, and are you throwing out whatever you can think of in the hope to offend others by presenting them with this sophomoric/facile type of cultural analysis? (Or is this the way in which you try to alleviate your experience of cognitive dissonance when you think about the state the US is in right now?)
“You do realize there’s no such thing as a “European” identity, or even European citizenship, right?”
I must correct you.
There is a European identity comparable in all to a, say, Indian identity. India and Europe compare very well in fact, just that India has accomplished a good deal of unification because of random historical reasons while Europe has not… yet.
There is a formal European citizenship, which brings some rights such as the right of travel or the right to vote and run in municipal elections wherever you reside.
Otherwise you’re probably right in rejecting all that patronizing.
Firstly, it is becoming increasingly recognised – most notably by the French and the IMF – that, in order for the Eurozone financial system to regain a modicum of stability, the ECB must step in and back the EFSF. In essence, the ECB must become a sort of unofficial ‘Lender of Last Resort’. If this situation comes about, the Eurocrats will have the ‘unlimited firepower’ – that is, the ECB’s ability to issue currency – with which they can essentially control the bond markets.
Well, simply printing money always is seen as the Real solution. IMO however, this is legalised theft and all those central bankers choosing this route belong behind bars. When year after year countries spend more than they take in, it is a matter of politicians to get their budgets in order and to cut expenses or raise taxes.
It is not a matter of choosing austerity, it is a matter of living within one’s means. We lived long enough at the expense of future generations and if history taught me correctly, it will never happen that the next generation will take on the debt of the prior generation.
We have been in the greatest debt bubble of maybe all times until 2007 and the deflation of debt will cause many problems over these coming years. We only just started the process of de-leveraging and already everyone talks how terrible the austerity is on people. Let me assure you, you have not seen anything yet. There is no easy way out of this situation but hopefully, we find real leaders who are able to communicate the problem properly and who have their countries at their heart and not their personal well-being and bring the sufficient integrity and idealism along for the difficult period ahead.
Oh, ye gods.. not the “feudal tradition” nonsense American “cultural analysts” trot out every once in a while when they want to argue that the US is an improvement over “Europe”. As Robert Bucholz put it a while ago, one might well argue that “America [he’s talking specifically — iirc — about the Virginia colony] was founded on a combination of racism, slavery and greed.” And then there’s the fact that your “res nullius” culture wiped out the Native Americans. Have you “put that behind” you yet? (I really don’t get what that last statement means.)
My Deare Foppe;
Reminds me of the story about when Kruschev visited the U.S. and was squired around by Dick Nixon.
At one point Nixon is supposed to have taken the Soviets to task about their abyssmal record on human rights anet thier ‘minorities’ down south way.
Kruschev is reported to have replied: “Ha! You Americans can talk! We never even thought of the solution you used on your Indians; genocide!”
Are you an American? If you are, shut the fuck up. Really. You have no business of judging others when it comes to bloody wars.
You are the aggressors now, real war mongers, disgusting a-holes, the most ignorant, aggressive bully boy fucks currently living.
Is this an attempt to get the 99% Americans at war with the 99% Western Europeans, ala American Blue vs Red? Divide and conquer?
The bulk of the population has zero control over any of this non-sense….Heck, Obama was elected in part because he
promised to stop the current wars, yet he ADDED to them.
So a majority of Americans *voted* for less war, but got more.
Elections are untethered from governing now.
Usually, the next step in governance is bloodshed….
“No man can see over his own height. Let me explain what I mean….
…If your intelligence is of a very low order, mental qualities in another, even though they be of the highest kind, will have no effect at all upon you; you will see nothing in their possessor except the meanest side of his individuality…
Intellect is invisible to the man who has none…”
Arthur Schopenhauer, “Counsels and Maxims, Chap III, Section 23
Gosh, you’re unstable. Like I said, I am American as well as European. So I take the liberty to criticize at will both.
By the way, I am also a psychologist, and I must say that within mental health circles your reaction is labeled as a “narcissistic injury lashing out”. Like a typical self-righteous European, I am sure that you are a narcissist. But now, continuing with the analysis, psychological theory also states that narcissists are in fact very fragile and insecure people, who, underneath their thin veneer of toughness, superiority, and arrogance, are really extremely immature and primitive personalities suffering of chronic low self-esteem, ready to crumble into pieces at the slightest of provocation.
You, my fragile little friend, are representative of Europe as a whole: a fragile, weak, immature, and ready to disintegrate incomplete entity.
Thank you for the laughs — I just love to cause true-blue Europeans come to pieces in public…LOL
Zero discounting is in the air! Methinks…Melikes!
Skippy…now for something completely different.
Hi Mate, the other day I was looking through the bedroom window when I noticed that the young lady who lives next door was sunbathing NAKED!!!. My natural reaction to this was to remove my penis and begin to masturbate. When I turned around my wife was just standing…there…with her arms folded.
Do you think my wife is a pervert?
You are just pampered little kid who took few courses in psychology, living on weekly allowance from parents. Using “LOL” gave you away.
“Shock Doctrine” came immediately to my mind as well – Friedman’s “triumph”, perhaps, but hopefully his “last stand”. These guys might make Pinochet look like a piker …
How have the Enarchs managed to keep the European Court of Human Rights out of this? The troika document amounts to wholesale derogation of economic and social rights.
The story of Greece and the rest of the PIIGs was inevitable. It’s what happens when weak countries are forced into a currency too rich for their economies.
It really is a matter of print or die for the EMU. The problem is Germany will pull up their marbles and go home before they allow profligate printing by the ECB. Thus, the end of the EMU as we know it is baked in the cake.
Read Bill Mitchell’s latest for an interesting point-of-view – see http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=16609
Everyone is just buying time to recapitalize the banks. So when they do pull the plug on the deadbeats, the banks won’t get sucked down the drain with them.
Russia will absorb the PIIGS. There are no accidents only dangerous, hastily formed plan B’s. Take that snippet of information for what its worth.
“But what if these far left stirrings then, as they so often have in history, summon into being the demonic forces of authoritarianism that ruled over Greece not so long ago? Then we could be looking at something like a military coup d’etat and a new military-backed dictatorship.”
In many ways this has already occurred, except it doesn’t involve right or left and goes way beyond any one nation. The financial elites are extreme authoritarians who have the world’s military/mercenaries at their beck and call to quell any uncomfortable resistance that arises in their path. If you want to meet their military, just oppose them!
Slipping on a spot of Greece http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonview.asp?catref=gfon607
The old trojan horse ploy http://hackcartoonsdiary.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/IMF_Greece_debt_cartoon.jpg
Need a time machine for this clever solution http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonview.asp?catref=rhon49
Seems ironic to me that while we in the U.S. curse Bernanke and the Fed for printing money and throwing it at the Banksters, with many expressing their desire to end the Fed, across the pond they’re trying to figure out how to establish something resembling the Fed as a solution to their debt woes.
My vote is for a global jubilee, but then no one listens to me :(
Let’s follow a thought to see where it leads. If I were a member of the human/global leadership, I would ponder the future and maybe come up with something like this. The world supports too many devourers of scarce and limited resources. The goal would be to eliminate the unnecessary burden, leaving only the population required to maintain and serve the largely automated evolving machine that propels the leadership’s vision of human progress.
Direct action (genocide, euthanasia, sterilization) to accomplish this goal would be too risky to attempt straight out, at this time. However, after breaking down the total global structure that once attempted to bring order and progress to the human condition, and through the natural tendency of men to turn violent, so easily manipulated, it would be possible to even more brazenly move forward on the path toward the future. War, famine, disease and other natural controls will bring the world to the point of groveling for order. And the new order will begin to establish the society that will conquer the future.
I mean, you gotta hope that it’s something like this; otherwise all the stupidity and childish behavior of mankind’s supposed elite is just stupidity and childish behavior…
The question of “stupid or evil” is always complicated. At a systemic level it usually is some combination of both, with many well-meaning, practically-oriented people primarily playing the role of “stupid,” while a smaller, more powerful number of people primarily play the role of “evil.” The two sides of the “stupid or evil” coin are mutually reinforcing and enabling — at least until enough well-meaning people break through the mental barriers that keep them safely stupid. Then only the bald threat of violence can keep them in line.
International finance (maybe global capitalism as a whole?), has now become more dangerous to Western democracy than international communism ever was. But what has got to be freaking out the more “evil” of the oligarchs is that many of us are waking up to the threats they pose to democracy. I went to my first local “Occupy” general assembly yesterday, and was deeply impressed by the sincerity and seriousness of the 20 or so mostly young people there. The spiritual commitment to democracy was palpable in a way I’ve never experienced.
I don’t know if Greece has enough of the deep cultural attachment to democracy or the power of non-violent protest that exists in America to steer away from your nightmare trajectory. But if the Greek people can find and deepen those commitments, then whatever “evil,” anti-democratic forces are out there will not win in the long run. And maybe, just maybe, this era will be looked back on as the flailing last gasp of the old, twentieth-century economic order, and the beginning of something at least somewhat better.
If everything does come to a crisis again soon, we can be sure that the oligarchs will again try to use it to increase their power and decrease the rest of ours, as quickly as possible (I’m sure that in the US, Timmy and Jaimie are already making their plans). But I’m hopeful that this time we’ll be ready with a peaceful, but resolute “no.”
Shock Doctrine
A sick, bloated, old elite white guy laying on his death bed will still moaningly command his nearest central bank to create more fake money and direct a ranking IMF official to impose austerity measures on the remining cockroaches, given that the 99%(i., e., humans) are all gone.
stimulus in Greece simply means more consumption, no productive investments, and when done more debt. So no solution at all.
Of course they don’t have a clue what to do.
The economy is complex beyond human understanding. It has non-linear feedbacks that produce chaos, which means that predicting the future state of the system is computationally infeasible. They don’t have a sensor net adequate to know the current state of the economy. They only have monetary and fiscal policy as effectors.
Thus, no country has successfully managed its economy for 2 generations. Likewise, no country has been successful following Keynesian policy, which is the only ideology they know.
It isn’t possible to manage an economy. It is extremely foolish to do so, and the harder they work at it the worse the results.
Can you make a better rainforest? That is the class of problem that making a better economy is.
Get the governments out of the way, stop screwing up the price signals, use Gold instead of fiat currencies or even ‘gold standard’ currencies, thus producing the most understandable economy possible. Then the economy will, most probably, recover after a few years.
Get the governments out of the way, stop screwing up the price signals, use Gold instead of fiat currencies or even ‘gold standard’ currencies, thus producing the most understandable economy possible. Lew Glendenning
Fiat is the ONLY ethical money form for government debts. Gold’s only place as money would be the private sector, where I doubt it could survive very long.
Also, the purpose of an economy is not to be “understood” (and thus be subject to manipulation) but to be ethical.
Keynesianism worked to some extent (and very well for a couple of decades at least) by reducing inequality, which is the source of all economic evils. For example high low tier incomes generate demand, something that Marx and even that phylo-Nazi of Henry Ford could see. Instead high tier high incomes generate almost no demand and that’s the problem of our age, temporarily patched by the Credit Bubble (a pyramid scheme for which a lot of people should be in jail and not just that scapegoat of Maddoff, whose unforgivable crime was robbing the rich and the Zionist mafia, instead of just robbing the poor like all those oligarchic leeches do with total impunity).
You are NOT going to fix this without a mechanic and the only realistic mechanic is a public legitimate institution such as a democratic government of some sort. The problem now is that the mechanic is being paid to keep the car broken because that is what gives huge benefits to a tiny elite at the expense of the, now suddenly celebrated, 99%.
However Keynesianism is just a patch, a patch that was designed to keep the bourgeois in power by means of gaining a bit less and sharing a bit more. It’s not the remedy more than a painkiler is for a cancer. We need true socialism through decentralized participative grassroots democracy institutions with FULL POWER on everything economic, beginning with property.
What is really going on, both in the US and Europe, is that politicians and their hangers-on are trying to get seriously rich.
The US Fed is and will be rescuing banks with taxpayer funds. They and the rescued will have insider information, the Fed will control both sides of the deal. Government employees are not prohibited from insider trading.
That is the scandal that will take down governments, and it is as inevitable as Greece’s default.
You need to take it 1 step further:
Greece is to the core what the world – INCLUDING EUROPE, but (at least for now) ex-Russia and ex-China – is to the US. The “Eurocrats”, i.e., the European elite, just like Japan before its bubble burst, had dreams of equal footing with the US.
Nobody connects Japan’s fall, and Germany’s 15-yr reunification effort with the US zenith in the ’90’s. What we’re really seeing is the forced reversion to the early post-War dominance of the US, with both Germany and Japan reduced to mere supporting roles.
Is this a joke? I can’t never tell. So many US people take Palin seriously…
Man, the US has a huge trade deficit. This means it owes an additional $600bn with every passing year. You’d need twice your rate of unemployment in order to stop getting deeper in debt with the rest of the world.
No joke whatever. We’re talking the hard power realities of the sociopaths who actually make the decisions. IOU’s mean nothing when you own the world’s reserve currency, price oil and all other vital commodities in $$, all of its international financial apparatus, wrote the WTO trade rules, and both have a military that is 20 times the power of the next biggest AND have a 70-year record of using it.
Europe is going to provide the bulk of the funding for the next US bubble and trickle-down “recovery” – then its China’s turn.
“Greece, of course, is far too small a country to produce a Hitler. ”
Are you sure? The smaller Corsica produced Napoleon.