Euro-crisis Grinds On - And On - But Not Forever
Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis Apr 05, 2013 - 05:52 AM GMTBy: Andrew_McKillop
CYPRUS - EURO - TECHNOCRAT TYRANNY
Week after week, month after month Europe's "Techno Tyrants" bulldoze forward, towards what they only know. Being elite deciders, the best brains that money can buy, their gameplan is obviously highly detailed and very well known - to them, but the Common People are not in the loop. They are only servile chaff, only good for another tax hike and idiot speech from the Me Too band of Euro-deciders pumped out round-the-clock on State owned media, and crony capitalist news outlets.
Above all, keep the people dumb and keep the party going - for the tiny and hidden "rump elite".
The euro currency started as an elite plaything, in the European Commission and Brussels think tanks of the 1980s, and was already used inside the Commission by the mid-1980s with an approximate US dollar value of about $1.33 but this money plaything was only the start of the Super Economy! Protecting it, since the crisis of 2008 needs a mix of technocratic Good Things - in particular what the 'crats call Exemplary Austerity and Fiscal Rectitude - and, to be sure, the cynical destruction of the economy, and the society of any smallish country (Italy for example) that "steps out of line".
As Lars Seier Christensen, the CEO of Saxo Bank wrote in a recent blog: "It is astonishing that a EUR 10 billion bailout can keep the world spellbound for so long. But then again, while the amount is not staggering, some of the implications are mind-blowing". He called what happened to Cyprus its "grueseome fate". Its previous relatively healthy, relatively respectable numbers for growth, sovereign debt and public finances, and its relatively healthy economic system and moderate unemployment were literally bulldozed flat. In Greece and by solidarity, street collections of food and clothing to send to Cyprus are already under way - the Greeks fell beneath the Technocrat's juggernaut themselves.
What went wrong for Cyprus in Christensen's view was its bankers expected that Eurozone politicians could be trusted to honor their fine words. Cyprus had heavily lent to Greece, not only to grab revenues, but also through solidarity. For at least 18 months the whine coming out of Brussels, Berlin and Eurozone vassal states like France was that baling out Greece, meaning support to the banks which lent to Greece, was a critical need - otherwise the "Eurozone would collapse".
Only the naive or credulous, dumb or brainwashed would not believe the simple fact that firstly in Greece, then in Cyprus, local banks were constantly pressured by the Euro Technocrats to "buy local debt". The weasel words added by the Technocrats were that "you can count on us if things get tough". The Eurozone would always be there to support any country getting into serious trouble, including Greece, other PIIGS, Cyprus, Slovenia, Malta, Belgium, this was integral to the Euro deal. Believe us, everything will be fine.
ONE WAY - DOWN
Conspiracy theorists have everything going for them. Without the euro, one thing is 100% sure and certain: these crises would not have happened with anything like the inexorable bulldozing rage that they are programmed - by the Technocrats - to have. This is Scorched Earth economics.
To be sure, countries as widespread as Ireland and Greece went hog wild for euro-denominated low interest loans, for a few years, their banking sectors are in no way innocent of all blame, but this does not mean that the entire Eurozone, apart from few select Good Boys led by Germany, merits the bulldozer. And the reason why the Eurozone playtime economy is ending in tears is drastically simple. This was the Administered Economy from Day 1 in 1999 when the euro went official. More than 12 years of sometimes careful, and always constant confusion operated by the Technocrats has ended with yet more economic administration in the shape of capital controls, frozen bank accounts, full-blown austerity politics and dramatic mass unemployment. Did anybody merit that?
Technocrats didn't feel, but knew deep in the laptops storing the Race Memory of their true role - faithful servants of the Hidden Elite - they could run the economy forever and ever, Amen. Instead, problems grew, were badly managed, often not managed at all, and then spun out of control. TSHTF. To the extent we can be sure about anything at this time, there are now "several Eurozones", some with convertible money, some without. Conversely we can be deadly sure what will happen to the economy and society across Europe, also including Germany.
http://www.acting-man.com/?p=22475
Friedrich Hayek in 1941 wrote that capital controls, banking controls and economic controls: "(are) the decisive advance on the path to totalitarianism and the suppression of individual liberty. It is, in fact, the complete delivery of the individual to the tyranny of the state, the final suppression of all means of escape". The Technocrat's dream of Total Control – not only for the mass of servile chaff, some of them imagining that they are "middle class" - but even those members of the rich who are outside the charmed circle of the Hidden Elite. The Rump Elite.
Already operating in Cyprus but not called what they are - wealth taxes - can with the flick of the cursor and a dropdown menu be set to scoop lower, and lower as "the wealth threshold" diminishes. VAT to hit everybody can be set higher and higher. There is literally No Limit.
We can with regret and fear be sure and certain that the drunken bulldozer of Technocratic Europe will grind on and move along from one country bailout to the next. For the Technocrats - who define themselves as "apolitical" and far above party politics - target persons and groups are everywhere. The wealthy, workers, savers, the young, the old. The lot. They must all "contribute", even the poor to the extent that more blood can be sucked out of stone. Democratic discussion about exactly what this "contribution" is supposed to deliver are short-circuited with curt slogans that "the bloated welfare state is on the point of collapse", along with the car industry, the shipping industry, the power industry, the building industry - in fact anything that had seemed to work, in the Time Before.
MAKE THINGS WORSE - THEN DISAPPEAR
Technocrats as we know have no names, or easily forgotten names, and always disappear in the night. One day they were there, destroying the economy, and the next they were gone.
In the European crisis, which is as much a cultural and ideological as banking and finance crisis, the role of the Technocrats, in reality, de facto, has been and is to make things that have gone wrong, into crises, every time and one after another. The Technocrats draw on pre-existing crises, intensify them, add their own witches brew of new crises - then disappear. Very rarely can they be caught, put on trial, and imprisoned or executed. Their rant and blether, which is gurgled by Europe's glove puppet politicians who now self-parody, is honed to perfection and can cover any contingency.
Taking two now supercritical threats to the European economy showing the Technocratic deathwish at work, Europeans are defined as persons having not the “right” to own their properties, but the duty to buy them, at constantly escalating and unreal prices, with mortgage lending often stretched to 40 years. These Eurozombies are also defined as unable to exist without private cars - despite over 80% of them living in cities not designed for cars - but, because of extremely grave environmental problems and the well known, entirely false crisis of global warming and the equally false rapid depletion of oil resources, the zombies now have the "duty" to buy electric cars. Produced in Europe.
The European construction sector has therefore been financialized into extinction, and the car industry has been destroyed.
The Technocrats wheel their go-go crony finance servitors on stage, announcing that even if the zombies did not fulfill "traditional mortgage criteria" – subprime loans would get them moving. The zombies would of course be vastly too stupid to read the fine print on their subprime deal. Similar fun-and-frolic financing is being, rather halfheartedly, used to try getting the zombies to run around in 35 000-euro electric sedan cars about the size of a VW Polo, with a 7 000 euro handout for each purchase, from the same State which is regrettably unable to balance its budget and is drowning in debt.
This is called “entitlement”, of the special, perverse and dysfunctional Technocrat sort, and applies to more or less anybody - and most important of all applies whether you want it or not. The reason is simple: You are paying for it.
Any rational person looking at the constantly rising domino linkage, built into the European economy over the last 15 years will be obliged to admit this Technocrat's macrame party, although unraveling fast, is so tightly wound that reversing it will be a heroic project. Imagining that moving to "something else", supposedly to "free markets", can be smoohtly, or easily or rapidly operated is a dream, without massive political change starting with dumping the Technocrats and their glove puppet politicians.
GLOBAL REACH
Again grist to the mill for conspiracy theorists, the Technocrat bulldozer runs riot across almost all and any other OECD countries. As David Stockman says in his latest book 'The Great Deformation', the 'tepid or fitful' post-2008 recovery shows every sign of being able to disappear overnight, as fast as the Technocrats, because this 'recovery' presumes the American consumer would once again function as the 'motor of growth'. This forgets that the extinction menaced Consumer Animalis has been run over by a bulldozer - for years, and years. While not agreeing with everything Stockman says, one of his other main points is that what was called "the economy" has been distorted and deformed, gutted and degutted, in fact "transformed". Stockman names politicians he thinks are responsible, but this wipeout is a classic Technocrat's project. Managed scientifically. To perfection.
There is no point homing in on any one specific mutation, transformation or simple dozer-flattening of "the economy", because the damage extends far out and away from that fragile thing. To take a flagrant example, operating in Europe, the USA and Japan we have the strange phenomenon of "QE". What exactly this has to do with "the economy" is practically unknown, mystical, a subject of Technocrat myth spinning, a modern fairy story. Stock figures such as Bernanke and Draghi, and whoever is BoJ Governor, this week, announce their strange goals - especially Restoring Inflation - but then their quantitatively eased billions, and trillions, magically drain away and disappear, only leaving a higher scum line in the bath tub, as more debt. Inflation is not restored, of course, but as if that mattered anyway! It was thaumaturgic, or something. There is no choice but do it again.
So we have to understand this cycle is very different. Stockman talks about "consumer impairment" but in fact it is the socioeconomy, or social-cultural-political- economic mix thast is a lot more than "impaired". Terms like "dysfunctional" can be used, but they suppose there is a real model and alternative someplace, that is "functional". The examples of this wayang-type Shadow Economy which has totally usurped the place that what we call "the economy" once had, are massive and omnipresent. Even such a homely thing as Wal-Mart is a financialized, dysfunctional shadow enterprise, now struggling with empty shelves. Described as caused by "dysfunctional logistics", by some, this mega enterprise is just one more which stumbles towards a form of half real-half fantasy status, where literally anything "uexpected and troubling" can happen.
The so-called "High Street economy", with its high street banks and major retail stores is a key target for the Technocrat's bulldozer. Major retail stores close daily; the banks are insolvent despite receiving untold billions from the Technocrats' glove puppets, the politicians. In the UK, several "high street banks" are now telling their customers to do their bank operations at their nearest post office, instead, enabling more bank branches to be shut. To be sure, a few upmarket Fat Cat shopper stores continue to "power up", like a few Fat Cat hedge funds, but this is merely a distraction to fill the business press and news shows with Good News. In reality "the economy" is not just contracting and probably a lot faster than we are told - but it is also splintering apart like a glassful of mercury thrown on the floor.
Old-time theories such as "Keynesianism" are supposedly a part of the Technocrat toolkit, but this is totally untrue. Key elements of the Technocrat's transforming project notably include the severe punishment of savings. These are unholy. They can be seized at will. Only the casino tables and roulette wheels of the parasitic-playtime, speculative shadow economy are permitted - and that may soon also be taxed and subject to seizure.
The result is already crystal clear in Europe - ungovernability. For glove puppet politicians, of course, this is the big excuse. This is why they "brought in the Technocrats". They had no choice and things were bad. There wasnt time to consult the public about it. Now things are a whole lot worse - and both the glove puppet politicians and the Technocrats need to be firmly brought under control. The only choice, now, is their total overthrow.By Andrew McKillop
Contact: xtran9@gmail.com
Former chief policy analyst, Division A Policy, DG XVII Energy, European Commission. Andrew McKillop Biographic Highlights
Co-author 'The Doomsday Machine', Palgrave Macmillan USA, 2012
Andrew McKillop has more than 30 years experience in the energy, economic and finance domains. Trained at London UK’s University College, he has had specially long experience of energy policy, project administration and the development and financing of alternate energy. This included his role of in-house Expert on Policy and Programming at the DG XVII-Energy of the European Commission, Director of Information of the OAPEC technology transfer subsidiary, AREC and researcher for UN agencies including the ILO.
© 2013 Copyright Andrew McKillop - All Rights Reserved Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisor.
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