It is fiscal statement (aka ‘budget’) frenzy in Australia at present, with the Treasurer about to bring down the annual policy strategy tonight. There is so much claptrap in the press and electronic media that I have tried to avoid saying anything about it. I may stick to that. I have been trying to understand the French election results though. That has occupied my attention a bit given the success of Macron (where a record number of voters stayed away and he barely scraped through the first round). He will be proven to be duplicitious I think. He is a Eurocentric neo-liberal who is anti-union, largely, anti-regulation and state intervention and believes the ‘market’ and an incentivised middle-class will do the trick for France. He is caught up in the Europe thing and so cannot see that the Eurozone straitjacket will ensure a growing underclass is retained. There was some interesting research published by a private investment bank (BOAML) – Job Quality and Escape Velocity – which provides a rather sombre view of the much-touted Eurozone ‘recovery’ over the last three years.

On April 22, 2017, the Italian Minister of Economy and Finance, Pier Carlo Padoan presented a briefing to the 25th Meeting of the International Monetary and Financial Committee of the IMF in Washington. He spoke on behalf of Albania, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal and the Republic of San Marino. This annual event examines the “macroeconomic outlook” of the nations in question and conditions the IMF policy approach for the year ahead. Padoan, an ardent pro-Eurozone supporter, told the gathering that in the last year, the Greek economy was recovering and that “GDP remained stable in 2016, while for the first time since 2010 two consecutive quarters of growth were reported”. I wonder what data he was looking at. The official national accounts data for Greece doesn’t tell that story. With Greece still wallowing in the depths of recession, it is clear that the IMF hasn’t finished with the destruction of that formerly independent nation. The destruction to date (27 per cent contraction and increased poverty) are considered by the IMF to be “only a down payment” on what Greece has to do so satisfy the Troika. At what point do people start to realise that the on-going costs of this austerity dwarf the significant costs that would accompany exit? And the Troika is not done with Greece yet. They intend to screw it down even further. And the costs of remaining in the dysfunctional monetary union escalate by the day. At some point, the Greeks will realise they have been dudded. What is left is anyone’s guess – but it won’t be pretty. The destruction of Greece is “only a down payment” according to the IMF – keep that mentality in mind when you are working out whether Greece should remain obedient or tell them all to f*ck off and regain their currency independence and restore prosperity.

One of the various smokescreens that were erected by the European Commission and the bevy of economists that it either paid or were ideologically aligned to justify the design of the monetary union around the time of the Maastricht process was the concept of subsidiarity. In 1993, the Centre for Economic Policy Research (a European-based research confederation) published its Annual Report – Making Sense of Subsidiarity: How Much Centralization for Europe? – which attempted to justify (ex post) the decisions imported from the 1989 Delors Report into the Maastricht Treaty that eschewed the creation of a federal fiscal capacity. It was one of many reports at the time by pro-Maastricht economists that influenced the political process and pushed the European nations on their inevitable journey to the edge of the ‘plank’ – teetering on the edge of destruction and being saved only because the European Central Bank has violated the spirit of the restrictions that a misapplication of the subsidiarity principle had created. It is interesting to reflect on these earlier reports. We find that the important issues they ignored remain the central issues today and predicate against the monetary union ever being a success.