Tuesday, October 30, 2012

The culmination of the ultimate cult

"Austerity" continues its unprecedented run of being the economic policy with the worst results but the most adherents:
About a quarter of working-age people in recession-hit Spain are unemployed, new figures have shown. The unemployment rate rose to 25% in the third quarter, from 24.6% in the previous three months, Spain's National Statistic Institute said.
Naturally there can be only one solution to this failure of austerity -- more austerity.
Spain has set out its austerity budget for 2013, with new spending cuts but protection for pensions, amid a shrinking economy and 25% unemployment. Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria called it "a crisis budget designed to exit the crisis"
We shall exit the crisis by creating a greater crisis.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

2 comments:

Montag said...

This has to be seen as the triumph of the monetarists and the Chicago School over the classic Keynesians.

In the face of all evidence, the economists in control continue to deny reality and insist that the pot of gold is at the end of the rainbow, if only they can get the rainbow to appear. The politicians, ignorant of the purpose of the statistical modeling (or cynical enough to appear ignorant of it) go along.

The purpose has always been to manufacture crises in order to move money upwards and to consolidate the power of capital. If Hayek and Friedman were alive today, they'd be screaming "more of the same--a lot more!"

And yet, for all of the gussying up of the principle with modern economics, Satan's banker, Andrew Mellon, said over eighty years ago what it was all about: "... it is during depressions that assets return to their rightful owners."

Meaning, of course, the bankers and the monopolists.

pansypoo said...

all we need is another revolution. REAL class warfare.