Thanks for visiting this blog, created in July 2012 out of great concern for the fate of the €uro currency area, once again on the verge of collapse due to the economically ill-advised and heartless austerity policies imposed on Greece, Spain and other heavily-indebted €uro area countries by a christian democratic German chancellor impressed with the budgeting skills of Schwabian housewives. Meant to reduce the public debt and put the countries back on a path to economic growth, these macro-economically idiotic policies are doing anything but cause "pointless misery" as Paul Krugman so aptly describes it (Bloomberg, July 23-29, 2012).

Instead of reducing public debt, the austerity measures set in motion a vicious cycle of economic contraction, rising unemployment and poverty, lower tax revenues, private capital flight, and rising public debt shares as the economy declines faster than the public debt. What’s more, the austerity-driven ‘blood, sweat and tears’ policies recommended to the European periphery derive from the same economic doctrine that brought us to the brink of disaster in 2008. These policies are not only misanthropic and counterproductive to economic growth and debt reduction in Europe, but will prove explosive for the €uro currency area unless a drastic change of course takes place - and soon.

While I do not pretend to have ‘the’ solution for the €uro crisis, I would like to offer alternative economic perspectives and views on current events, and hope to chart a more humane path toward a balanced, socially fair, and sustainable economic future for the €uro area.

On the origins of the 2008 Great Financial Crisis:
“90+% of traders are men, and they bet all of our bank deposits on liar loans which froze credit leading to 40% average losses passed on to ordinary taxpayers; then begged for trillion-dollar bailouts upon which they paid themselves 50% higher boni.”


Sunday, December 22, 2013

Christmas and New Years Greetings (Update New Year's Eve 2013)

Dear readers,

haven't posted for a while due to the usual X-Mas season stress, a bout with the flu, an unusually busy December at the office, and campaigning for the European election in 2014 (yes, dear readers, I am involved - how could I not be ?). However, nothing shall keep me from wishing you, dear readers from around the globe, a very happy, peaceful christmas with your loved ones and a healthy, happy, and successful New Year 2014. 


"Just as the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say “thou shalt not” to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills."[Papas Francesco, Evangelii Gaudium, para 53pp, Vatican press 2013] 


I believe, perhaps naively, that there is good and bad in all of us. May the good prevail in the New Year 2014 and beyond! In this spirit I leave you, dear readers, with a true story that gave me hope for humankind:
"He had just saved her [a pregnant dog] from a fire in her house, rescuing her by carrying her out of the house into her front yard, while he continued to fight the fire. When he finally got done putting the fire out, he sat down to catch his breath and rest. A photographer from the Charlotte, North Carolina newspaper noticed her in the distance looking at the fireman. He saw her walking straight toward the fireman and wondered what she was going to do. As he [the photographer] raised his camera, she came up to the tired man who had saved her life and the lives of her babies and kissed him just as the photographer snapped this photograph." [Charlotte Observer, 4/18/2005]


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