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.”


Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Germany's Progressives are fighting while Latin Europe suffers and Big Business triumphs

For those who had hoped that Europe's progressives will, for once, work together to defeat conservative and ultra-right parties during the 2014 European election campaign so as to end the misery in the Southern European periphery, the recent attacks by leading members of Germany's green party against Sahra Wagenknecht (co-chair of Germany's LINKE) is a huge disappointment.

But first the background to all the fuss:

On February 13, Zeit Online published an interview with Sahra Wagenknecht in which she states the obvious, namely that the Euro system - as it is now - does not function very well but divides Europe. Following that, a number of suggestive questions by Zeit Online meant to make the reader think that Ms. Wagenknecht agrees with her partner Oscar Lafontaine who favors a replacement of the euro with a new European currency system. 

The Greens responded by Blitz-attack: on the same day, Simone Peters, co-chair of the Green party, accused Wagenknecht of nationalism and populism on the same level as the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland), the new ultra-right party in Germany.  Two days later, Sven Giegold, MEP co-leader of the German greens' European election campaign, challenged Ms. Wagenknecht to support progressive economic policies, insinuating that she was instead following down the path of the "nationalist grave diggers of the euro" (his words). Here is a very good rebuttal to Giegold's non-sense: "Sven Giegold und die grüne Verdrängungsmaschine".
   
The attacks from the Greens came on the heel of a scandalously rude and disrespectful interview of Ms. Wagenknecht by a talk-show moderator on German public TV who attempted to convince the audience that Wagenknecht was out to destroy the euro. Even the mainstream Spiegel Online thought that was too much, opining that this interview was "the expression of an aggressive conformism that pervades the entire ZDF". (ZDF, the second German public TV station is financed by tax payers but heavily influenced by Big Business with key supporters on Germany's public media board).

Considering the above-mentioned events, an interest-led PR campaign against the LINKE doesn't seem far-fetched. Question is: are the Greens, as the direct competitior of the LINKE, being instrumentalized by Big Business or are they preparing for a future coalition with Merkel's pro-Big Business CDU ? Or are they just desperate in view of the negative press coverage they had recently ? ---> see "Europa-Parteitag: Pragmatisch, grün, langweilig",  "Grosses Gerangel um Spitzenpositionen", heute-show: Lutz van der Horst im Einsatz gegen das Charisma-Defizit der Grünen:


Whatever may be the reason for the greens' aggressive behavior against the LINKE, striking is the complete lack of humor among the German greens displayed in the video, with the sole exception of Claudia Roth. But what's really deadly is the desperate but futile attempt of Germany's leading greens to appear cool - sad ! 

Meanwhile, Big Business and Big Finance are living it up, enjoying the fruits of their successful 'divide and rule' strategy among Europe's (and America's) progressives: see "Troika consultancies: a multi-billion business beyond scrutiny" and "I crashed a Wall Street Secret Society".
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