I had a long flight today and other things to catch up on after the Easter period. But the stunning news yesterday from Eurostat that the EU17 unemployment rate has now risen (in February 2013) to 12 per cent. Each month’s Labour Force data sets a new record peak for the Eurozone. Each month that unemployment rises, the real GDP losses that are being deliberately created by the existing policy regime mount. As I show in this blog, those losses are enormous and will never be regained – that income has been lost forever. The human dimensions of the crisis are also huge. And the evidence mounts that the conceptual underpinning of the policy framework doesn’t hold water. This is an extraordinary period of history where a flawed theoretical approach which doesn’t stack up when confronted with the data, is being used to create a flawed monetary system design, which has failed categorically when judged against any reasonable criteria of social purpose, and then the leaders impose even worse policy designs over that failure. Sometime in the future, humans will judge the current generation to be very unintelligent indeed.

I left out the word not between the words “are” and “things” and replace the “or” with “and” between buy and summon. Otherwise this would have been the latest piece of insight offered by the outgoing EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy, who appears to be intellectually stretched when it comes to the most basic macroeconomic concepts despite regularly making comments that appear to be of a macroeconomic nature. Let me remind him: spending equals income and output. Growth in spending when there is massive (and rising) excess real productive capacity will generate growth in income and output. Growth in income and output almost certainly generate growth in employment. And, just in case we might be worried that any crowded-in productivity growth reduces the employment dividend and, cogniscant of the fact that there are millions of relatively unskilled workers without jobs in Europe at present, governments around the region could employ all of them if they introduced an unconditional Job Guarantee. Governments can create extra real growth and jobs anytime they choose unless the economy is already at full employment. Then they would not want to anyway. So the question that Mr Van Rompuy should be answering is why he is overseeing government machinery that refuses to give the governments this capacity. That is a question none of them will answer.

I thought that blog title today was appropriate given that Aristotle was Greek. Today I explore motor vehicle registrations – well to be exact, a single registration. That is a backdrop to a brief discussion about the OECD’s latest publication – Going for Growth 2013 Report – which takes the ludicrous to a new level. These organisations need to be closed and the cash that governments pump into them to provide very amenable – some would say, over the top – working conditions (high pay, no tax obligations, well supported travel, first class facilities etc) could be diverted into something more useful. Like provide some low-paid workers with jobs. Lets assume one OECD manager earns the same wage as about 20 low-paid workers per week. The trade-off 1 job lost for 20 gained sounds a good bet to me. Anyway, amidst all the talk about structural agendas and reform zeal there is an ugly truth. There has to an easing of the macroeconomic constraint that is preventing economies from generating enough jobs. Firms need to see spending before they will increase production. Making life harder for workers through cuts to wages, conditions of work, pensions and the like will not create a single job. I lie – at least one job. Some OECD official will get assigned the job of evaluating their work and then a renewed bout of lies will emerge clothed in techno-speak. I just know that one Ferrari does not a recovery make. It tells me that the world is turning for the worse.