A Greek economy run by Brussels will ignore the lessons of history, leading to more misery, writes Boris Johnson.
It is one of the tragic delusions of the human race that we believe in the inevitability of progress. We look around us, and we seem to see a glorious affirmation that our ruthless species of homo is getting ever more sapiens. We see ice cream Snickers bars and in vitro babies and beautiful electronic pads on which you can paint with your fingertip and by heaven suitcases with wheels! Think of it: we managed to put a man on the moon about 35 years before we came up with wheelie-suitcases; and yet here they are. They have completely displaced the old type of suitcase, the ones with a handle that you used to lug puffing down platforms.
Arent they grand? Life seems impossible without them, and soon they will no doubt be joined by so many other improvements acne cures, electric cars, electric suitcases that we will be strengthened in our superstition that history is a one-way ratchet, an endless click click click forwards to a nirvana of liberal democratic free-market brotherhood of man. Isnt that what history teaches us, that humanity is engaged in a remorseless ascent?
On the contrary: history teaches us that the tide can suddenly and inexplicably go out, and that things can lurch backwards into darkness and squalor and appalling violence. The Romans gave us roads and aqueducts and glass and sanitation and all the other benefits famously listed by Monty Python; indeed, they were probably on the verge of discovering the wheely-suitcase when they went into decline and fall in the fifth century AD.
Whichever way you look at it, this was a catastrophe for the human race. People in Britain could no longer read or write. Life-expectancy plummeted to about 32, and the population fell. The very cattle shrunk at the withers. The secret of the hypocaust was forgotten, and chilblain-ridden swineherds built sluttish huts in the ruins of the villas, driving their post-holes through the mosaics. In the once bustling Roman city of London (for instance) we find no trace of human habitation save for a mysterious black earth that may be a relic of a fire or some primitive system of agriculture.
It took hundreds of years before the population was restored to Roman levels. If we think that no such disaster could happen again, we are not just arrogant but forgetful of the lessons of the very recent past. Never mind the empty temples of the Aztecs or the Incas or the reproachful beehive structures of the lost civilisation of Great Zimbabwe. Look at our own era: the fate of European Jewry, massacred in the lifetimes of our parents and grandparents, on the deranged orders of an elected government in what had been one of the most civilised countries on earth; or look at the skyline of modern German cities, and mourn those medieval buildings blown to smithereens in an uncontrollable cycle of revenge. Yes, when things go backwards, they can go backwards fast. Technology, liberty, democracy, comfort they can all go out of the window. However complacent we may be, in the words of the poet Geoffrey Hill, Tragedy has us under regard. Nowhere is that clearer than in Greece today.
Every day we read of fresh horrors: of once proud bourgeois families queuing for bread, of people in agony because the government has run out of money to pay for cancer drugs. Pensions are being cut, living standards are falling, unemployment is rising, and the suicide rate is now the highest in the EU having been one of the lowest.
By any standards we are seeing a whole nation undergo a protracted economic and political humiliation; and whatever the result of yesterdays election, we seem determined to make matters worse. There is no plan for Greece to leave the euro, or none that I can discover. No European leader dares suggest that this might be possible, since that would be to profane the religion of Ever Closer Union. Instead we are all meant to be conniving in a plan to create a fiscal union which (if it were to mean anything) would mean undermining the fundamentals of Western democracy.
This forward-marching concept of history the idea of inexorable political and economic progress is really a modern one. In ancient times, it was common to speak of lost golden ages or forgotten republican virtues or prelapsarian idylls. It is only in the past few hundred years that people have switched to the Whig interpretation, and on the face of it one can forgive them for their optimism. We have seen the emancipation of women, the extension of the franchise to all adult human beings, the acceptance that there should be no taxation without representation and the general understanding that people should be democratically entitled to determine their own fates.
And now look at what is being proposed in Greece. For the sake of bubble-gumming the euro together, we are willing to slaughter democracy in the very place where it was born. What is the point of a Greek elector voting for an economic programme, if that programme is decided in Brussels or in reality in Germany? What is the meaning of Greek freedom, the freedom Byron fought for, if Greece is returned to a kind of Ottoman dependency, but with the Sublime Porte now based in Berlin?
It wont work. If things go on as they are, we will see more misery, more resentment, and an ever greater chance that the whole damn kebab van will go up in flames. Greece will one day be free again in the sense that I still think it marginally more likely than not that whoever takes charge in Athens will eventually find a way to restore competitiveness through devaluation and leaving the euro for this simple reason: that market confidence in Greek membership is like a burst paper bag of rice hard to restore.
Without a resolution, without clarity, I am afraid the suffering will go on. The best way forward would be an orderly bisection into an old eurozone and a New Eurozone for the periphery. With every month of dither, we delay the prospect of a global recovery; while the approved solution fiscal and political union will consign the continent to a democratic dark ages.
Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/19/2012 07:54 ||
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#1
Nationalism is now growing. One world government thought is the cause of this disaster. Socialism doesn't pay the bills. National pride will turn the tide. A drowning swimmer will pull anyone close down with them. A poor athlete or student will begrudge those who advance. Some will fail but others will push ahead. Things will change. Some for the good and some for the bad but change it must. "Which shall it be"(H. G. Wells) , the future is not for the weak.
#2
Hopefully, after two obviously failed attempts to revive after previous suicide attempts, we won't waste our resources or citizenry again. Let history take its course.
#3
How long will it be before we are asked to vote for a "plan" that was hatched in Beijing?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
06/19/2012 10:37 Comments ||
Top||
#4
The powers that be thought setting up OWG-NWO = PROTOSPACE GOVT-ORDER was going to be quick + painless, or at least like the EEC = Common Market.
Didn't have to explain or even ask the Voters iff they wanted it.
IMO OWG is the future, but the OWG = Space
"Baby" is so big + contentious, etc. in the womb that Baby Momma is gonna be in serious painful labor for many hours or days yet [decades?], + is gonna need lots of drugs to beget the Birth.
AFTERWARD, BABY DADDY IS GONNA GET HIS LIGHTS PUNCHED OUT BY BABY MOMMA IN RIGHTEOUS FEMME INDIGNATION.
PARIS - France's Socialists vowed on Monday to use a resounding victory in weekend parliamentary elections to pursue President Francois Hollande's drive for growth in Europe while sticking to promises to cut the budget deficit, mostly through taxation increases.
Hollande will use a special session of parliament next month to whittle down France's numerous tax exemptions and pass tax rises for large corporations, especially banks and energy firms, in a bid to cut the deficit to within the European Union's 3 percent limit by next year despite a stagnant economy.
All this will make the economy more stagnant, which will require more government programs, which will require more government workers, which will require higher taxes. Europeans call it 'socialism', Americans call it 'Obanomics'...
Economists expect the Socialist leader - who has also pledged a 75 percent tax rate on those earning over 1 million euros - to use an audit of the state's finances due early next month to water down his campaign pledges to increase spending on welfare and education and justify tax rises.
Final results from Sunday's election showed the Socialists won a comfortable majority of 314 seats in the 577-member National Assembly, freeing them from reliance on euroskeptic far-leftists opposed to more austerity measures.
Ahead of the vote, Hollande's government had insisted it could meet its deficit targets with only minor cuts to administrative spending, without resorting to the kinds of austerity programs seen in recession-stricken Greece or Spain.
Appearing to brace French voters for tough measures, however, Interior Minister Manuel Valls said on Monday that meeting France's EU commitments would involve sacrifices.
Except by the sacred cows and the Friends of Hollande...
"We need to sort out this country. Every Frenchman will need to make an effort but fairly, via tax reforms. It will be difficult but that is the task facing us," Valls told RTL radio.
France has one of the highest levels of government expenditure in Europe and posted a budget deficit of 5.2 percent of GDP last year.
Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault is due to outline the government's policy agenda to parliament on July 3, shortly after receiving the state auditor's report.
Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici recently said the government was heading for a 5 percent deficit this year -- requiring some 10 billion euros in additional measures over the to hit its 2012 target of 4.5 percent.
Economists said the Socialists' parliamentary majority on Sunday - its best ever parliamentary score - would allow the party the room to impose tougher austerity measures and structural reforms if needed.
Translation: higher taxes...
"These policies, which were not in the political program, would not be accepted by Communists members of parliament and by all Greens, but the support of the Socialists, who are much more faithful to the president, will now be enough," wrote Dominique Barbet, economist at BNP Paribas in Paris.
A spokeswoman for the audit office said its report had been postponed until July 2-4 from an initial release date on June 28. That allows Hollande to postpone the domestically sensitive discussion of how to plug France's deficit until after the June 28-29 EU summit at which he will press European leaders to back 120 billion euros of stimulus measures for euro zone economies.
Hollande was expected to press the case for the growth measures - which include joint bond issue to fund infrastructure projects and better use of EU structural funds - at a summit of G20 leaders in Mexico on Monday.
Because what the world needs is more publicly funded infrastructure projects...
He travels to Rome on Friday to meet Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and discuss closer political union and unified bank regulation in Europe, also on the EU summit agenda.
Translation: how do they best stick Germany with the tab...
Amid rising tensions between Paris and Berlin, Merkel has rebuffed Hollande's calls for joint euro zone bonds to resolve the crisis. She bluntly warned on Friday that France needed to urgently look to its own flagging competitiveness.
"The question everyone is asking is what will France do in terms of structural reforms and policies to stimulate growth, since there is a broad agreement that France has a serious competitiveness deficit," said Jean Pisani-Ferry, director of the Bruegel think-tank in Brussels.
Many economists point to a sharp rise in wage costs over the last decade and the high level of welfare charges on salaries as the prime reason for France's rising trade deficit, which hit a record 70 billion euros last year. They note that salaries in Germany, France's main trade partner, have remained flat.
The Socialists, however, disagree. They say France's economy needs more investment in research and education, and they have also pledged to set up a new investment bank to lend to small- and medium-sized companies, which create most jobs.
So that French workers can retire at 60 instead of 62, while Germans retire at 67. That's not going to fly in Dusseldorf...
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