And a happy new year 2007

Date: 2016.03.19 | Category: in english | Tags:

This article was written in greek, on the beggining of february and was translated by Nik. It was edited a bit by me, as always all praise goes to the translator, for all the faults you can blame me

Why 2007? Because the crisis started that year. Most of the world perceives its spacetime reality so distorted, that P.K. Dick would smile with the irony. Out of this distortion we, the soothsayers, earn our fame, our glory, and our houri virgins.

Many people think that the crisis started at September 2008 with the Lehman Bros collapse. The better informed will also grin and note that it had already started at February 2008 with another investment bank collapse, the Bear Stearns.

This belief may be reinforced by a couple of feature films, like the Big Short. In order to build the climax for its “heroes” going against the flow (funfact: the heroes are upstart speculators), the film jumps forward in five minutes time, from February to September 2008. However the speculator heroes already knew since 2007 they had won their bet.

The crisis – as the realization of the bubble blown out – started within the first months of 2007. Of course, everyone pretended to look the other side, as if this burst had been a temporary slowdown of growth. Besides, the U.S. economy had been in “growth” for 17 consecutive years, a situation unprecedented in all the history of capitalism. It took a couple of years before we fell on the ground to understand that “growth” had been only an inflation on assets’ value (Minsky left us too early). But why spoiling the drama of the fall to all these gullible?

Welcome to groundhog day

My crystal ball tells me that we live 2007 again. The next phase in the crisis has already begun, but likewise most prefer to look elsewhere, not to spoil the dream. All the omens are just here, especially the urge to sell. To sell what? Whatever, houses, tablets, companies, oil, everything. Distress signals come from all over the place; the most amusing of which was a couple of days ago from my neighbor who came to my home to ask my opinion about his project: He tries to persuade all the neighbors to sell their part of the courtyard (an open space of 50m x 50m) in order to have another block built there. And my neighbor has absolutely nothing to do with constructions.

During the 1929 crisis there was a saying that when you took a stock market tip even from the shoe shiner, know you are not very far from collapse. I think this story with my neighbor is indicative of the today’s bubble in Germany.

The only missing confirmation is another promotion scheme from the German government, like the scrappage program of 2008 (which subsequently was reintroduced to Greece by PM Costakis in the spring of 2009). You now know it was the VW crap that they had bought.

But if I expected the German government to realize the crisis, I would be the first to be fallen aground.

Godzilla, our guardian angel

My guardian angel of my predictions for a decade has been the Japanese recession, which started in 1991-92 and kept to the end of 2004, a mere 25 years. Then it was paused for about 10 months (due to exports to China) and again goes on undisturbed to this day. It’s in no way consistent and, internally, it is full of events. Not so dramatic as in 1991-92, as people are aware of this crisis for the last 25 years and are not taken aback. The lack of drama does not mean that things didn’t change much though.

A crisis is seldom a fiscal-only event. Our cult of economy faith and our “materialistic” approach, which asks for a “financial explanation” (to be given also in illustrative charts) behind every social and political event, prevents us to see even the tree itself, not to talk about the forest all around.

It is a short-sighted approach to say, for example, that Fukushima had been a random event (of those “random events” happening regularly in nuclear reactors every ten years). The same goes for the Arab Spring, considered only as a result of speculation by Wall Street boys.

The reason for my storytelling of all these, is to ask you to forget about every detail, like pensions cut, German exports drop and a lot of similar events (which will anyway leave their mark on the new period of the crisis) and try to see the bigger picture. Not because we are in need of a 20-year forecast, but in order to avoid the collisions happening in front of our eyes.

Germany as the new epicenter of the crisis, and the fall of the North.

The title is not about some karmic justice, fulfilling the curses by radical left ANTARSYA along with Lafazanis fellows (who prepare the new guerrilla front in the left). It is simply the well-known rule that whoever falls from a higher point, makes the biggest bang.

It is no different an atmosphere here in Germany now, as it was in the U.S. on 2007, and the same one as in Greece on 2008. Everyone feels that the party is nearly over, and everybody tries to find something to blame for this “misfortune”. For example, in Athens of the December 2008 riots, it was a diffused hysteric emotion that Christmas sells plunged because of those damned youngsters refusing to set down with their brand new Playstation we bought for them. (The 2008 market collapse all around the developed world, if you remember, “would not touch the country” according to our officials).

The diffused emotion of that December of 2008 was that the kids have their own point, as long as they don’t set our cars ablaze and furthermore dont distort the peace.

The same diffused emotion circulates now in the North, but instead of our own kids, it is the immigrants (which makes it a lot easier, as those brownies are not even OUR kids).

The great Merkel dribble.

As the time goes by I become more confident about the motives of A. Merkel, in opening the German borders. From the beginning I rejected the notion that economic motives were behind the move. The idea that Germany will need cheap labor amidst the crisis is dubious, even for German Elit standards. Of course the Industrial and Employers‘ Confederation might see them as a chance to gain something out of it – not to take such an offer, it would be unfair, not to say impolite; but it has been almost proven that the Western Elites rarely have an outlook beyond six months (at best). So I had to look within this interval for her motives.

In our last IRC I had a ramble that Merkel sought a way to change the image of a nasty dictatorial Germany oppressing Europe. It’s been some time now since Germany tried to push into the limelight some other EU players for the role of the bad guy in Germany’s stead; but everyone already presumes Slovaks and Lithuanians as Germany’s adherents, so the deception that all the blame should account for the harsh Finnish minister, was never a good selling point.

With all those hundreds of thousands of immigrants outside its borders, Germany could easily grasp the Hungarian way, blocking them with fences and machine guns. But this would give more momentum to the idea that Germany is the great oppressor, an idea Merkel cannot tolerate politically or even we can argue personally.

The stigma of 1945 is the official narrative of the Western world, and Nazi regime is used as the yardstick over all the “Darth Vaders” afterwards, so the way of the guns was out of the question.

By opening the borders Merkel pragmatically bestowed the role of the morally bad to everyone else, while she assumed the role of the morally good for Germany (and herself).

All these had a huge impact domestically on her political career, while suffering a de facto abolishment of the Schengen Treaty. The first is impressive (as Merkel never decided against a common mood of the German people in her reign), but the second is not impressive at all. Since the beginning of the crisis, Germany has shown an extreme (suicidal I’d say) indifference to the structure (namely the eurozone) that provided its power. So the proverbial chickens have now come home to roust.

Today, six months later, the whole of Northen Europe feels quite hysterical. We are not talking about now the usual suspects: nationalist Hungarians and Polish, Estonian SS and the rest. Even the caring Scandinavians, the so-called multi-cultural Dutch, the freedom fighters French, even the Swiss have come to an anti-immigration frenziness. Above all those bickerings, stand the Germans who got the upper hand, politically and morally. Merkel has the capacity to dictate a temporary residence in Germany for the immigrants, without anyone claiming her a racist, because Danes and Swiss already seize their valuables, Sweden imposes identity control to allow in, while they are ready to oust 1/3 of those already in the country, and so on.

The plan to build a fence at the macedonian border that whould stop the flow of immigration inside Greece is ridiculously pointless. Greece, in case you did not notice, becomes – according to the vision – an immigration dump (I mean, “hot spot”). Especially as in the coming springtime, the flows of people from Syria are going to be friendlier with the bedeviled jihadism europe is so afraid of.

The diplomatic talks between the European Commission and Erdogan are a tell tale case. Not because “the sultan” has flipped out, as they say. We know this for a fact a long time now. It is because of the comedy of the Europeans’ stance towards him. “You were praised like a prince” , says Jean-Claude, “we granted you three billion euros”, and still you remain indifferent. This is the way European Elites make sense of this world. And would be a great laugh, if it wasn’t so scary.

Mirror, Mirror on the wall…

Even though the immigration issues remain the cause of Europe’s hysteria, it is only a reflection of the crisis and the collapse we are experiencing. The story of white–ass-groping by thousands of dirty brownie hands this New Year’s Eve in Cologne (and in Finland, as I hear) tell much more about the social situation in europe than the non-story itself.

It is quite similar to the Greek December of 2008 riots. The youngester’s riots tells us more about the collapse of the “Greek dream” itself, than about some kids setting the “highest Christmas tree of europe” on fire in Athens.

That means that the hysteria of all those well-off citizens in the eurosystem is grounded not on some ancestor glory or racial sense of superiority, but it’s a manifestation of the collapse itself. As in Greece, the manifestation is totally upsurd, dazed and disoriented.

Under these circumstances, most political discussions are pointless, especially in the way the sides are now shaped. The left -that Michea loves to call irrelevant nowadays– is indifferent because it gives no answers to the questions discussed, not because of Michea’s accusations. Let’s take as an example, an easy question that the left cannot answer: Are you for or against a Brexit?

Into the boats, sisters, up into the mountains…

In these times of collapse, the defenses each and one of us possess may be limited. The same goes for the communal defenses, as there is no common fantasy (yet?) to unite us under something. Hence the communities are reformed into small groups of common ideas. The villages’ madmen in a sense. Their moves are erratic and nobody can predict their outcome.

Those madmen may gather together and occupy one of the emptiest towns of macedonia and start a direct democracy.

Or they may build a container house to come and visit me in Montevideo or Tuscany mountains.

Or they may marry a Cuban to get a resident permit in Cuba (sorry boys, it’s the only way to emigrate to Cuba)

Or, or, anything that I cannot predict. What I can say though for sure is, stay as far away as possible from the collapse (not only geographically), and it is hopefully not going to devour you.

I also know that looking the other way is compelling. Its possible that nothing bad happens. It’s also possible that you feel secure because you are a computer geek and you get good money. Or you have a child to raise, or that the image of the madman is not exactly so sexy. Or your social status prevents you from thinking about living an a small village in Uruguay. Or maybe it’s just that your mother is going to die from her anxiety if you go away. There are countless rationalizations. I can provide you with dozens of them.

But even though these rationalizations can sooth you like magic charms, you know that they are not exactly reasonable. Because the same reasoning was employed as well in 2007, claiming it impossible for the system to collapse, as it is backed up by the best minds, the richest and the most powerful people of the world.

So welcome to 2007, I wish you a happy new year.