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, March 3, 2013

Message from Italy to Europe's Austerians: VAFFANCULO !!!


The big surprise in last Sunday's national election in Italy is the strong showing of former comedian Beppe Grillo’s “Five Star Movement” (with well-attended V-Day celebrations where V stands for Vaffanculo) which garnered 25% of valid votes, clearly ahead of Mario Monti's austerity-friendly centrist coalition which barely passed the 10% threshold. 


 Italy's centre-left alliance led by Pier Luigi Bersani obtained a thin majority of votes (29.5%), but a secure majority of seats in the Chamber of Deputies thanks to a constitutional majority bonus of seats. Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right alliance followed close behind with 29.2% of valid votes. In the Senate, no political group or party won an outright majority. (see “The Italian General Election of February 2013”)

Some say, the election results spell chaos for Italy and disaster for the EU and the euro project, others complain that Italians have chosen two clowns to run the country, referring to Berlusconi and Beppe Grillo. Well, that may be true, but just as the fools in Shakespeare’s plays, Italy’s so-called clowns are no fools at all. Just as their Shakespearean counterparts, Italian 'fools' are fearless in speaking the thruth and in uncovering deceit and misdeeds of people of higher standing. They do not follow any ideology and reject all appearances and traditional moral codes to make a valid point: that Italy's politicians are corrupt and that the austerity measures imposed by unelected EU technocrats are undemocratic, inhumane and unacceptable !

To me, the message to Italy's political caste and Europe’s austerians is loud and clear: We will not stand any longer for the fiscal austerity imposed by you on our people while you are filling your own pockets. If this is your vision for the European Union, then Vaffanculo - get yourself f.... !


Europe’s Very Serious People would do well NOT to deride or ridicule the democratic choices of Italians but should instead take heed and reassess their policies. Or would Europe prefer the rebirth of a new Mussolini? As Paul Krugman pointed out days before the Italian election results, “disreputable politicians are on the rise all across Southern Europe. And the reason this is happening is that respectable Europeans won’t admit that the policies they have imposed on debtors are a disastrous failure. If that doesn’t change, the Italian election will just be a foretaste of the dangerous radicalization to come.” (see “Austerity, Italian Style” NYT Feb 24, 2013)



I hope, the Independent European Daily Express is right in concluding, “Observers see the defeat of the reformer Monti and the surpisingly good results for EU critics Berlusconi and Grillo as a clear signal directed at Brussels that the austerity drive is coming to an end.” 
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