Since the crisis of Greece and the euro in early May, the European Union has become a political zombie: its neoliberal and monetarist brain is damaged, but it continues to create havoc and disaster. Merkel, whose inaction has escalated the cost of the financial crisis from €45 to €450 million, is imposing her mantra on Europe: Austerity, Austerity, Austerity. Cuts in public spending and wage freezes are imposed on a society already made precarious by the Great Recession. Greece, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Belgium: nobody is sheltered from the attack on the european welfare state by global finance.
Barroso (Commission in Brussels) and Trichet (Central Bank in Frankfurt), although they would like to handle the crisis themselves instead of national governments, concur that only swift cuts can restore the faith of financial markets in the euro. International banks and speculators are demanding that all of us foot the bill for the deficits created two years ago to save their asses. Austerity will worsen the crisis, which has already made millions of precarious unemployed, and plunge the european economy into deflation, in a vicious circle of recession and unemployment, mounting xenophobia and nationalism.
