It has been argued for some years that one of the important consequences of Germany’s obsession with fiscal surpluses in recent years, articulated by Chancellor Merkel and Finance Minister Schäuble as the “Schwarze Null” austerity policy, is that Germany has been under-investing in its physical infrastructure. But it has taken the recent industrial unrest to bring that to the fore into the public debate. Even the IMF is now getting on the bandwagon. In its in-house journal (Finance and Development, Vol.52, No.2, June 2015) there was an article – Capital Idea – which says that “By increasing spending on infrastructure, Germany will help not only itself, but the entire euro area”. At present, Germany is trying to take the high moral ground in the Greece negotiations, but its motivations are obvious – it doesn’t want the generosity that the rest of the world has shown to it in the past (debt forgiveness) to be given to Greece now because that would allow the Greek government to stimulate growth and demonstrate that the austerity path is destructive and myopic. It doesn’t suit Germany’s own vision of itself (as articulated by its own crazy government) for an anti-austerity stance to be given any oxygen. But if it looks at itself in the mirror it would see an economy that is barely capable of economic growth itself, most recently has zero employment growth, has decaying physical infrastructure such that bridges are roads are becoming dangerous, has generated no meaningful real wages growth in years, and as a consequence, has a workforce that is now showing signs of open revolt. Some moral high ground.

I am continually amazed at the arrogance of the Eurozone leaders who in the face of palpable professional failure hold a straight face and continue to advocate the same disastrous policies as if nothing had happened over the last 7 years. I don’t believe they suffer from – cognitive dissonance. I think they know full well what they are doing and they personally do very well out of the chaos their policies are causing. But it is almost certain that the Greek people are suffering from a cognitive disorder brought on by historical experience and, more recently, by the media onslaught that has erroneously claimed that there would be catastrophic consequences if Greece dared to leave the Eurozone and restore currency sovereignty. The stated aims of the Greek people are incommensurate and there doesn’t appear to be a broad debate going on in Greece, which might make that inconsistency transparent.

The ECB had another lavish annual talkfest in Portugal over the weekend just gone in the guise of their – Forum on Central Banking. Like all these EU-type gatherings there was plenty of fine food and wines. They even provided footage along those lines. The President of the ECB Mario Draghi gave the opening speech – href=”http://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2015/html/sp150522.en.html”>Structural reforms, inflation and monetary policy – on May 22, 2015. There was also talk about how “structural and cyclical policies … are heavily interdependent” but then a denial of the same. The message from the President was like a record stuck on the turntable – “to accelerate structural reforms in Europe … even in a weak demand environment”. Well here is my message – similarly like a stuck record – structural imbalances occur because of weak demand and the best time to assess structural policy is when you have first attained full employment by appropriate setting of fiscal deficits, not before. It is madness to deliberately constrain fiscal balances to levels that ensure high and entrenched unemployment and rising underemployment and then expect citizens to support microeconomic policies that further undermine their welfare and damage what job security they have. But that is the EU way and that is why the Eurozone is a massive basket-case failure.

Last week (May 5, 2015), the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Economic an Financial Affairs (ECFIN) published the – Spring 2015 European Economic Forecast – which provide a picture of what they think will happen over the next two years across 180 variables. To the extent that the forecasts reflect past trends (given the inertia in economic time series outside major cyclical events), they provide a clear picture of what is wrong with the Eurozone. The salient feature of the Forecasts is that the European Commission expects Germany to increase its already astronomical Current Account surpluses to peak at 7.9 per cent of GDP in 2015 and falling only to 7.7 per cent in 2017. The Commission has in place a set of rules that require nations to restrict external surpluses to not exceed 6 per cent of GDP. Germany repeatedly fails to abide by those rules, yet lectures the rest of its Eurozone partners about their failures to meet the targets, crazy as they are. The unwillingness of the European Commission to enforce their own rules in relation to Germany is one of the telling failures of the whole Eurozone experiment.

Finland has been one of the Eurozone nations taking a hardline on Greek austerity and have consistently refused to support on-going bailouts of Greece. At the weekend, Finland went to the polls and tossed out the incumbent government and put in its place a centrist party that stood on a platform of a wage freeze and further spending cuts, allegedly to restore Finland’s competitive position. If that prospect wasn’t bad enough, the Centre Party will have to enter a coalition with the party that came second in the polls – the Finns Party, which is a ragbag anti-immigration group that wants Greece kicked out of the Eurozone. It is possible that Finland’s Parliament will not support any further European Union bailouts for Greece. Apparently Finn’s are buying the line that further and intensified austerity is necessary because of rising labour costs have undermined Finland’s capacity to compete in international markets as the demise of Nokia, so the narrative goes, illustrates. The last thing that Finland needs right now is more austerity.