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So lame is Europe’s
latest attempt at spin control that Americans could view it as comic
relief from our own worries about the U.S. economy’s accelerating death spiral. Creating a global
diversion was doubtless a
goal of the exercise, which
featured Sarkozy and Merkel,
president and chancellor,
respectively, of France and Germany, posing for the photo-op unveiling
of a scheme – sorry,
no details at this time – to put Greece
and the rest of the PIIGS on
sound financial footing.
Never mind that France itself starts to look like a financial
basket case if one scrutinizes their
books too closely; or that the German people, if not yet their leaders, have lost their appetite
for bailing out the rest
of Europe. And never mind
either that, rather than describing
their supposed plan, Merkel and Sarkozy have merely promised to tell us more about it
in the fullness of time – reportedly
at a November meeting of Euroland’s potentates, wizards and feather merchants. To their dubious credit, and perhaps owing to an understandable desire to avoid the derision of the
world, the two leaders did
not refer to a “secret plan” when they deliberately
left it under wraps; no, they alluded merely to “a plan, ” and we
can only surmise that they were fearful
of raising the public’s
expectations by implying that
something new or unexpected
was about to be tried. Better instead to maintain and nurture the low-grade cynicism with which most of us have come to
regard these announcements.
That cynicism seems manageable, at least – presumably until market forces cause the whole shoddy edifice to crumble.
In the meantime, Sarkozy and Merkel have bought perhaps a month’s time
for the hopeless illusion that
political Europe will remain united under a single currency. Sustaining the endgame for yet a while longer was no small feat, considering that, these days,
when pit traders around the world hang up their smocks on a Friday afternoon,
it is with
the fear that Monday will bring
news of some epic financial disaster involving a Greek default, or perhaps even bigger problems at some huge,
daisy-chained bank elsewhere on the Continent. The disaster
we’ve all been expecting
could happen at any time, really, but the banksters and politicians have wisely calculated that a run on The System can be postponed more or less indefinitely as long as supposed remedies publicized at carefully timed intervals are left intentionally vague. The Merkel-Sarkozy
press conference was the vaguest such media event so far, a dog-and-pony show that lacked both a dog and a pony. It was brazen of them to assume that merely talking
the talk would gain another
months’ reprieve
for Europe; however, with
stock markets strongly on
the rise since, it looks like they’ll accomplish their goal.
Rube Goldberg to the Rescue!
Not that any
of us expects much more than a financial Rube Goldberg contraption, if even that, come November. Indeed, no one could possibly believe at this
point that the Merkel-Sarkozy
plan will have any more effect on the unfolding cataclysm than all of the other schemes that have been tried so far. Still, the mainstream narrative that a political solution can restore Europe’s financial integrity will continue to obtain, thanks in large part to
the news media’s faithful
and unquestioning complicity
in spinning the story. While
we should all like to believe that it is
habitual laziness and
ignorance that have prevented
the Fourth Estate from being more forthcoming about the true
condition of the global financial system, it is in fact
wide-eyed, scalp-crawling
fear that has caused news editors and op-ed writers to shrink from the truth. They are in it too deep by now
to forsake the pretense that the central banks, working in concert with our benighted political leaders, will somehow stabilize the financial system.
Nor are
they likely to accomplish anything of lasting
value with the latest proposed superfund, which, at two
trillion euros, would dwarf
the $600 billion-euro figure currently on ostentatious display. These outlandish numbers are meant to challenge the subversive designs of speculators who would bet against
Europe, the euro and, most immediately,
Spain and Italy. Instead,
they merely encourage cynicism, which is summed up succinctly in the question, “…and where, exactly, would those two
trillion euros be coming from?” Do the spinmeisters
who pull these numbers out of thin air actually believe we are so stupid
as to believe the money is
real?
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