No money, no jobs: Europe’s growing desperation

No money, no jobs: Europe’s growing desperation

Patrick L Young is expert in global financial markets working in multiple disciplines, ranging from trading independently to running exchanges.
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Published time: March 03, 2014 08:24
Gonzalez and her children stand in a street with their dogs and belongings after Spanish riot police evicted them from an unoccupied building of flats in Malaga (Reuters / Jon Nazca)

Gonzalez and her children stand in a street with their dogs and belongings after Spanish riot police evicted them from an unoccupied building of flats in Malaga (Reuters / Jon Nazca)


The EU’s inability to deliver repeated promises of prosperity continue to ring hollow. After five bitter years of recession, now the bloc can barely register anemic growth.

After so long in the economic doldrums, the fabric of the Mediterranean is being torn apart. Following massive bailouts to Greece and Spain, Cyprus’ savers were pillaged. France and Italy dangle by a thread over the economic abyss. Eurozone unemployment is 12.1 percent, with current predictions merely shaving that to 12 percent by year’s end. (The UK and US are already approaching 7 percent, and falling).

Europe is busily contributing another nightmare chapter to economic history. The Europhile single currency mania promised a prosperous destiny. Brussels’ hype has instead delivered a festering economic disaster. Mediterranean citizens are frustrated at economic bulimia: crazed austerity following spendthrift government. Even Germans are unimpressed that they have suffered library closures and other Teutonic civic dysfunction in order for Berlin to help bail out their southern neighbors.

IMF Chief Christine Lagarde is seen on TV as Eva Borja Jimenez waits for the judicial commission to carry out her eviction in Madrid (Reuters / Susana Vera)

IMF Chief Christine Lagarde is seen on TV as Eva Borja Jimenez waits for the judicial commission to carry out her eviction in Madrid (Reuters / Susana Vera)

The core corporatist socialism of the EU apparatus is entirely to blame. Ordinary citizens are apparently an afterthought to the league of unelected Brussels Politburo functionaries. The EU promotes dialogue between ‘stakeholders’ at corporate level. Thus policy develops from the top down, akin to a centralized Soviet, to serve the government-corporate nexus and not citizens. Budgets are finessed from workers’ pockets and the totalitarian leviathan operates in the best interests of ‘big’ (government, politics, corporations, NGOs et al).

This hierarchy leaves the EU horribly exposed, while a slew of emerging markets have kept growing. China and India both grew more than 25 percent over the past four years alone. Eurostat reckons the eurozone might grow 1.2 percent this year - Asian convergence is becoming reality as Europe declines.

[link to rt.com]