Erle Frayne D. Argonza
Pathetic! This is what I can say of the latest 0.8% growth for the Eurozone during the 1st quarter of 2011. The figure seems to echo the growth for Greece during the same period, of 0.8% growth in growth domestic product or GDP.
As I’ve been saying for a couple of decades now, based on a pattern that was started from 1990 onwards yet, Europe is flat on its back, and that flatness just doesn’t seem to be changing at all. I already heralded the alarming trends way back in the 1990s, as a professor at the University of the Philippines Manila, and shared my notes to tv and radio audiences whenever I was invited as guest resource speaker on economics and social development.
When the Euro was launched, simultaneously with efforts to politically integrate Europe, I saw the opportunity for a slight correction of the stagnant situation of Europe. But monetary solutions to non-monetary problems will only be temporary, and sooner or later this solution will falter. Then the entire stagnation trend will ensue.
The ‘fall of Europe’ economically traces back to the radical return of the obsolete doctrine of liberalism laissez faire. European nations rose to wealth and fame based on physical economy doctrines, so it is best to reconstruct those doctrines the moment that stagnation and decay would take place. But to junk entirely those strategies and policies that brought Europe to where it was till 1990, is to champion madness in the economic terrain.
The same radical embers of liberalization, privatization, deregulation, and reinforcing policies (tax reforms, decentralization, currency liberalization, decreased budgets for social services) were enforced in the United States and Japan, and look at where those powers are today.
Well, the same ‘mad economics’ policies were imposed on the developing economies like the Philippines’, and the results of the austerity measures that were used as sticks to enforce them redound to mass poverty, endemic unemployment & underemployment, low or sub-optimal wages, and hunger. The ‘dragon’, ‘tiger’, and ‘emerging market’ economies have learned their lessons the hard way, and they are today the drivers of the world economy.
Look at these degenerative results of the obsolete ‘mad economics’: (a) de-industrialization, (b) agriculture decay, (c) deterioration of infrastructures, (d) decline of cutting edge in S&T (science & technology), and (e) deteriorating transport facilities. Destroy those sectors mentioned, and you destroy a nation’s economic foundation altogether.
That was exactly what happened to the North—Europe, Japan, U.S.A.! Just make a close scrutiny of Greece, where de-industrialization alone factored so strongly to bring down growth, degrade labor to paltry wages (down by 35%-40%), and saw its remaining wealth looted by greedy, demonic financial predators. The same financiers that looted Asia and led to its financial meltdown in 1997, have destroyed the North and will continue to do so.
Eurozone’s technocrats are mentally bankrupt and should be lined up in the Hall of Shame. Like the Mad Nero that fiddled in the roof as Rome burned, the technocrats and politicians of the entire European Union or EU have been fattening their purses and meteoric prestige rise, while Europe’s folks grovel in the dire effects of austerity measures imposed by the financiers’ puppet bank IMF.
[Philippines, 14 May 2011]
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3 comments:
You're pretty right about your descriptions, analysis, forecast of Europe. Keep it up!
Very sad for my country and continent. We're going down, and we see Asia rising and we could only dream now of surviving.
Europe's burning as you said. Wow its been almost 2 years since you said that, and its still a burning Europe.
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