With Greece and France turning hard to the left and Cameron
taking a localized beating it’s now only Germany that stands in the way of
economic sanity in the Europe. I won’t make the obvious comment. I’ll just
quote Paul Krugman…
“The Germans, needless to
say, don’t like this conclusion, nor does the leadership of the central bank.
They will cling to their fantasies of prosperity through pain, and will insist
that continuing with their failed strategy is the only responsible thing to do.
But it seems that they will no longer have unquestioning support from the
Élysée Palace. And that, believe it or not, means that both the euro and the
European project now have a better chance of surviving than they did a few days
ago.”
Click here for Bob
The secret word is Panzer
Ideologically (and idealistically) satisfying tho' it is to paint all of us Euro folk as the hapless victims of the (primarily) German financial juggernaut, it ain't necessarily so, to quote the late Eartha Kitt.
ReplyDeleteWhile it's true that the Eurotocracy openly conspired in turning blind eyes to the creative and mendacious accounting provided by Greece & Italy & Spain to claim their seats at the trough, we the people of all these lands were all too eager to join the conspiracy, choosing to feign oblivious disregard to the frighteningly obvious.
Consider for a moment this admittedly over-simplified, but fundamentally sound, example - if the drachma & the euro had existed simultaneously at the point of eurofication, the "real" exchange rate would have been around 400 dr to €1, fixing the price of, say, a luxury German car well in excess of 20,000,000 drachma. Come the euro, these cars were bought in their thousands by delirious Greeks for around €50,000. Where did this 400+% rise in perceived economic clout come from? Where indeed - answer, nowhere at all, it was and is a complete myth. This fantasy was obviously unsustainable and the human cost now being paid is the price of waking from the delirium. It's a terrible cost, a heartbreaking cost, a life-destroying cost but it's as inevitable as sunrise and sunset. To condemn the Germans for inflicting pain and austerity on the rest of Europe is like condemning a hare fighting to save itself from dying in a snare, it may have to chew off its own foot or die trying - maybe "and" die trying.
Austerity may well not work at all at this stage, but nobody, nobody at all, currently has the faintest idea of a credible alternative. The left talk about investment to stimulate growth and employment - but how do you bribe your way out of gaol when you're flat broke and already owe the gaoler several fortunes?
So it may all come crashing down, and although there may be some fleeting satisfaction to be got from witnessing the further collapse of the capitalist ideal, an adrenalin-drenched "I told you so" moment, the fall-out in human suffering and political upheaval is going to be very, very unpleasant - and that's putting it nicely. Hard to justify any triumphalism, perhaps?
the above comment is well on the money..heads I win, tails u loose..
ReplyDeletelet's all go back to bed _