Election projection: more bloodletting for anemic Greece

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The 50 seat premium to the leading party will give the two parties of the last coalition the majority if the election projection holds. This will mean I presume another 10% reduction in industrial output for the next year in order to help pay back their creditors. They predict about 29% for New Democracy, 27% for Syriza, 12% for PASOK and this follows a massive blackmail campaign by the EU bloodletting and leeches crowd and the global elite in general. They did show signs of relenting on the bloodletting when Syriza threatened to win, but if these results hold expect them to return to their unyielding merciless posture.

I'm not sure why they insist on doing this anymore. If this goes on, if they drag the situation on endlessly, most of the European Union won't have economic growth, and industrial output will drop significantly, until at least 2017. They should just quit now. This is an endless lucid nightmare, and the only way to end it is to realise it isn't going to end itself. Just abolish the European Union and all subsidiaries, or loosen it up. At the moment, the organisation consists of overpaid half-wits who keep trying tactics shown in the past to be based on thin air while handing out strict regulations that won't practically work to local industries and governments.

The largest threat to Europe is the idea that European cooperation can't happen in any way but a shared currency and a political union.

The PASOK leader wants a unity government including Syriza. I guess he doesn't want PASOK to complete its suicide. So it appears that the bloodletting and leeches crowd can stop celebrating and realise that there's no way to avoid failure for Greece without changing its ways. They did discreetly change their ways somewhat with Latvia in 2010 and as a result they're claiming vindication for austerity when in fact it was the decision to relent on that which caused what's really still an anemic recovery based in part on the emigration of 5% of the population or so.

There is no answer to an easy credit fuled bubble economy.

Borrow money, pay people like they had jobs, pay those with some job better, and then expect factories to spring up?

To gain industrial production you have to produce something, better and cheaper than the rest of the world, the purpose of government is to prevent that. Mainly in wages and benefits demanded, where equal demands of labor and effort are not allowed.

Workers have become a net loss. It may be a weak economy with high unemployment, but at full employment it would be bankrupt. The only place to make up for a social safety net is is having a lot of people not qualify.

The young, 50% unemployed are being kept as street children, and it will not change, not even in a generation, as there are still more of them than jobs, and jobs are declining.

Robotic factories are not going to help, nor will open borders.

The long term solution is to pay people to not have children, pay children to be an only child, and not let the world walk in and take up the space.

50% unemployment can be answered by the Black Death, 1918 Flu, major wars, or intentional population reduction. To grow out of it, would take doubling output, which calls for doubling markets, which would take another planet, for this one is stript of everything.

Capitalist, Communists, Socialists, all want to grow. They are the problem, and all seek converts, from outside their borders.

The one problem is too many people, the one answer a very local economy that has to maintain and develop what they have, not loot the world and dump their garbage elsewhere.

I'm as confused as I ever was. How is a good leftie supposed to feel about the European project?

On the one hand, it seems to be introducing a democratic deficit and giving power to financial institutions, which is the sort of thing that is supposed to keep lefties up at night. But on the other hand, leftie hubs like the Guardian often claim that it is allowing people to transcend nationalism, and preventing the rise of fascism, which is the sort of thing that lefties are supposed to like.

There's a good rule of the thumb I've devised for this question. Divide the information you receive about the European Union into two categories:

1. Emotional, guilt-ridden gibberish;
2. Fact.

The European Union is not what allows people to transcend nationalism. Without the European Union, there would simply exist European countries. Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland and Canada exist without having their immigration policies and economic and fiscal rules dictated from Belgium, and they're not exactly nationalist dictatorships. It does not prevent the rise of fascism. In fact, you could argue that it causes the rise of fascism, as we've seen in Greece, where more than one in twenty people are now voting for a Neo-Nazi party because it promises that Greece will 'rise again' and hurt the people trying to tear Greece apart for profit, like investors and criminal immigrants.

A lot of that sentiment is the result of policies pushed through their throats by the European Union. They were forced by the European Union to allow immigrants into their country when unemployment was at a record high, and were then forced to keep those policies intact while their economy and budget collapsed under the weight of austerity measures and much of their population fell into bitter poverty. I understand why they'd be angry.

It's a shame people who support further European regulation often turn to emotional explanations. We were going to vote on a European Constitution in a referendum. Before the referendum, we were bombarded with threats. If we'd vote against it, the lights would go out (actual quote by a minister) and there could be armed conflict and genocide on the European continent. We voted against it, but they introduced it without a referendum under a different name.

I know it's a cliche, but the picture you are painting makes me think of tales of the old Stalinist Left. It took an astoundingly long time for some people to admit that the reality of the Soviet Union had very little to do with communist theory. In their excitement, they jumped the gun and were misled into believing that they could place their faith in an "idealistic" power structure instead of continuing to struggle for their ideals.

Is a large portion of the Left going to wake up on the wrong side of history once again? I hope not.

It's a good cliche. Nonetheless, I don't think the European Union has much to do with 'the Left'. Most actual left-wing parties in Europe oppose the way the European Union is structured. As far as I know, they're looking specifically for people who adhere to economic neoliberalism, social multiculturalism and transnationalism. They seem to dislike actual left-wing parties, and it's one of the few subject on which right-wing nationalists and left-wing socialists can agree - it's bad.

I think the question must, however, come down to whether having entered the EU and monetary union, it is worse to stay in, or worse to leave?

The Euro is, present circumstances notwithstanding, still a global reserve currency. It is the second largest reserve currency in the world, it serves as the currency peg for a number of subordinate currencies. It's share of the reserve currency market expanded considerably, and it has been somewhat protected in the last 3 to 4 years by the fact that the US dollar is facing very similar structural pressures because of US fiscal policy failures.

Those are all pretty compelling arguments for the Euro as the mechanism for your international trade and to stabilize your country's current account. But the price of that is to surrender fiscal policy sovereignty to a European (let's face it: German) approach. Any Eurozone country that steps too far out of line with Germany is going to be in the same position as Greece, sooner or later.

On the other hand, Greece's depature from the Euro would require reestablishment of a freely traded drachma (a pegged drachma would be of no advantage to Greece because they would still face the disconnect between fiscal and monetary policy). The drachma would doubtless freefall until the value of drachmas issued fell to a level that reflected the Greek current account deficit.

Given the huge increase in the cost of imports and the inflation that would potentially result, I suspect you would see a vast amount of cash transactions using euros. This would present a significant reporting problem for the Greek government, resulting in lower consumption tax revenues, and an understated GDP--putting further pressure on the new drachma.

Ah, okay. That's reassuring. I have only a very vague sense of the European political spectrum.