It is my last blog post for the year. And we leave the year with not much gained from a progressive perspective. The mid-term elections in the US just swapped deficit-terrorist Republicans (who have been compromised by the big-spending Trump) with ridiculous PayGo Democrats, who are intent on repeating all their previous mistakes. The Brexit negotiations reveal how appallingly compromised the Tories have become and how venal the European Commission is. The British Labour Party fiscal rule shows that the next British government hasn’t yet jettisoned its Blairite past and its New Keynesian economic advisors are dogmatically taking Labour down a path it will regret. Italy has been bashed into submission by the European Commission bullies, which a week or so later, choose to turn a blind eye to France breaking the rules, because the Gilets threaten the whole show. And Germany still accumulates massive external surpluses in violation of European law and nothing happens. Happy New Year.Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Greece “neither thrived nor struggled” – the financial press alt world
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia
“The mid-term elections in the US just swapped deficit-terrorist Republicans with ridiculous PayGo Democrats, who are intent on repeating all their previous mistakes.”
ReplyDeleteOligarchs instruct the Democratic National Committee [DNC] who to choose as the DNC's candidate. You must vote for the DNC candidate, no matter how pro-corporate and pro-Wall Street the candidate is, because Priority #1 is to defeat Trump.
No matter how neoliberal a Democrat candidate is, you must vote for him or her because . . . Trump.
Forget jobs. Forget ending the wars. Forget Medicare-For-All. Forget ever-rising debt and ever-worsening poverty. The only important thing is to defeat Trump because . . . Trump.
“Bloomberg news published an article late last week which gave Greece a B-grade or satisfactory grade overall. The assessor commented that ‘some say the pain was worth it for taming the inflation that preceded euro membership’.”
Sounds like Madeline Albright, who boasted that, “The price was worth it” after U.S. sanctions murdered half a million Iraqi children. Then and now we are dealing with psychopaths.
Also, I like phrase “pain was worth it” as though Greece’s agony was brief and mild, and is now over. Ignore those Greek multitudes eating out of trash dumpsters and burning their furniture during cold winter nights.
“The European Commission is good at bullying the weaker nations, who feel inferior members of the ‘European Project’, but won’t lay a glove on Germany.”
That’s because Germany rules the European Commission. After all, the ECB is in Frankfurt. Germany is a parasite on Europe. Like all parasites, Germany claims to be a “victim” of its host. Germany is killing its host, yet claims to be the only thing that is keeping its host alive.
Meanwhile weaker nations are bullied, and are hosts, because their politicians allow it. In return for being on the bankers’ payroll, politicians cling to the euro, and to EU rules.
The Swiss never joined the EU, nor adopted the euro. They never agreed to be hosts of Germany or Brussels. Therefore average Swiss people are not suffering.