Oh-oh... now you're REALLY f@cked; Cameron and Merkel vow to keep up Thatcher's great work!

Here's a headline that's guaranteed to set a hundred million sphincters into involuntary spasms;

"Cameron and Merkel call for urgent action to make EU flexible and competitive."

That's British PM David Cameron, the unctuous twat who truly believes Thatcher saved his country, and Angela Merkel, she of the "austerity enema" that has been setting the EU economy right for several years now.

Flexible and competitive. Indeed! Maggie could have written that headline herself. We all need to be flexible and competitive of course, because there's a less fortunate, more hungry person somewhere willing to do our job for less.

Posing for a photo-op at Merkel's Alpine retreat, the "Berghof," the leaders agreed that it is up to them to show "global leadership."

Be afraid...

'Shadow state' or New World Order?

I think a lot of the hype about the supposed New World Order is just that; overblown hype.

Elites have always run things. That's why they're called elites. In cases where an extant elite of long standing has been pushed into the dumpster of history, as in Russia circa 1917-18, a new elite rises virtually overnight. To Boris Borscht-breath at the tractor factory things looked pretty much the same the day after the revolution as the day before.

Be that as it may, here's a fascinating look into what's happening in the Eurozone right now. The fact that the article originates in the lair of the Euro-bullies just gives it extra gravitas.

Needless to say, one of the hallmarks of today's global elite is that they hail predominantly from the finance sector of the economy. Perhaps that accounts for their save-the-banks obsession. In days gone by banks were allowed to fail with some regularity. In the US alone some 9,000 banks failed during the depression.

If we view the "New European Order" as a trial run for the "New World Order" there are some heart-warming lessons to be taken away.

In the first place, it doesn't work. This should come as no surprise. While the loudest voices and highest profiles within the global elite may come from the rock-stars of finance capital, the day to day running of the machinery of governance falls to the bureaucratic class of planners, policy analysts, economists, and credential-accumulators of all stripes.

For the most part, these are folks who couldn't organize a two-car train.

As Herr Doktor Friedrich Sell points out, the European Central Bank is not a bank, but a political instrument to be used for political ends by politicians.

And reading between the lines, what both he and Thomas Mayer seem to acknowledge is this; in the event that the austerity being imposed by the stronger onto the weaker within Europe fails, there is always a plan B.

Plan B means everybody gets to loosen their belts because they'll be eating again. But, Oh My God, there will be inflation!

That could be the ruin of the finance capitalists... and the salvation of everyone else!

Let's not lose sight of the fact that well below the radar of the world's headline writers is a world far removed from the too-big-to-fail Rumpelstiltskin economy that is the focus of their obsessions. A world where real people make real things and do real stuff that other folks will pay for.

Let the Eurozone fail.

Let the big banks fail.

Let's jam sticks into the spokes of shadow states and world orders old and new.

Life will go on.

Preacher caught with pants down

Gwyn Morgan is a very successful top drawer exec who is now the Chairman of the Board of SNC-Lavalin, Canada's biggest international construction conglomerate. Sort of a "Bechtel  North" outfit that's famous for landing the big deals in the shadier realms of the global economy.

When he's not busy in the Chairman's chair or out on the lecture circuit, where he likes to spread the gospel of "corporate ethics," Gwyn pens a column for Canada's newspaper of record. It's a somewhat preachy column, all things considered, and I found today's effort typically stinky.

He's tossing turds at the Euro-zone dumpster-divers, those benighted citizens who have been reduced to finding their next meal in the dumpsters of Europe, from Athens to Barcelona to Lisbon to Madrid. The reason they're in those dumpsters scrounging for their next meal is because Angela Merkel's "austerity enema" has made that dumpster their last best hope.

Gwyn takes exception to the fact that these folks are blaming the lenders or the politicians for their plight. They are "blaming others," when it is so patently obvious that it's their fault. After all, they are the ones who were living large off  all those " extravagant programs that drove debt to astronomical levels."

That's right! It wasn't those guys with the 100 foot boats in the ubiquitous Mediterranean yacht basins and the Bentleys and the Manhattan and Belgravia apartments. It was the grubby-fisted school teacher who thought he was entitled to retire at 62 WITH A PENSION!!!

Now that they've hit the debt wall of course, these coddled malcontents are looking for someone to blame, and their first instinct is always, you know it, blame the Bentleys-in-Belgravia crowd! And if those guys have hoisted anchor and sailed for the Caymans, well, blame the bankers!

Gwyn does a sterling job of setting the record straight. Debts are debts and if they're not repaid, well, God Himself fears what could happen next. So stop your whining, starving children of Spain and Greece. Suck it up! In two or three generations, if you keep your noses to the grindstone, the bond-holders should be paid in full and we'll let you out of the dumpster.

This is in stunning contrast to how excess debt is dealt with in the private sector. First of all, once you're deemed "too big to fail" you get a bail-out courtesy of those folks now rummaging through the trash.

If you weren't quite too big to fail, if you were an Enron or a Worldcom or an Olympia and York or a Lehman Brothers, hell, you just pulled the plug and moved on! Hundreds of billions of dollars of debt just go away!

It's magic! And neither Dick Fuld or Paul Reichman  has ever been spotted climbing out of a dumpster.

Germans saying "nein danke" to Merkel's austerity enema

They exercised their democratic franchise in Westphalia yesterday.

The result was what the media call a "resounding defeat".

A resounding defeat for the Merkel austerity agenda.

A resounding defeat for the IMF and the international banksters who have been flogging this austerity nonsense as though it is the only course that will save us from the lake of fire.

A resounding defeat for the "fuck the people, save the banks" mantra that has been echoing around the world these last few years.

Finally, a vote for common sense and the common good!