Thursday, December 15, 2011

Mike Whitney on the EZ debacle


Mike Whitney looks at the EZ and doesn't like what he sees.

Read it at CounterPunch
The Colossal Muddle
by Mike Whitney

A sampling:
Europe’s agenda-driven politicians have savaged economies in the south, slashed the flow of credit to capital-starved emerging markets, and extended a growth-choking pall across the continent. Whose idea was it to put the world’s future in the hands of ideologues who still think we’re on the gold standard?
****
The reason Draghi hasn’t pushed to be the lender of last resort is because he can simply “slash bond purchases” and effect the changes he wants. As a G-Sax alum his loyalty is to big finance, which means that his real aim is to implement policies that serve the interests of fatcat speculators. He doesn’t want a blank check to bail out the system. What he wants is a pressure point that allows him to impose his neoliberal vision on all of eurozone. The ECB’s bond buying program has become a form of financial coercion.

1 comment:

Unforgiven said...

So now it's the Gold(man Sachs) Standard. Europe gets to Occupy Poorhouse, waiting for the day when the Austereian Unicorn appears and pinches a phat one to signal the end of the depression and approval of the new average wage of 1 Euro per day.