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, September 23, 2012

Speaking of benevolent leaders....

Obama: “I would say that your first and principal task is to think about the hopes and dreams the American people invested in you. Everything you are doing has to be viewed through this prism." (Obama's Way by Michael Lewis, Vanity Fair, October 2012)

I just wish Obama had thought more about the hopes and dreams of ordinary Americans, rather than the hopes and dreams of American banks/ters.





...in contrast to Jörg Asmussen, ECB Board member and one of the key German officials determining the economic conditionality for financial assistance from eurozone institutions:



"They have not sufficiently implemented the measures they have promised to implement,” he says simply. “And they have a massive problem still with revenue collection. Not with the tax law itself. It’s the collection which needs to be overhauled.” ... “They are also having a problem with the structural reform. Their labor market is changing—but not as fast as it needs to.” (Asmussen about the Greeks, in "It's the Economy, Dummkopf!" by Michael Lewis, Vanity Fair Sept. 2011).

I wouldn't want to be under his tutelage. Already his bald head and the way he's said to laugh scares the sh... out of me: "Instead of opening his mouth to allow the air to pass he purses his lips and snorts the sound out through his nose. He may need laughter as much as other men, but he needs less air to laugh with."

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