4. Deflation

... you will realize that you cannot eat money.
(Cree Indians)


First we experienced the so-called subprime crisis, which via a „commodious vicus of recirculation“ of hastily printed money inspired the € crisis, which meanwhile institutionalised itself in Europe with zero or negative interest rates. Growth – apart from indiscriminate growth in a resource constraint world is not possible and its advocacy evil – hovers around zero in all EU economies for decades and politicians boasting about some 1,someting % growth faked from their national statistical agencies are nothing but ridiculous. In reality a very few getting richer and the majority gets poorer, not only comparatively. Capitalism critics call this fact redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top. This is what kept our economies going and no this consumptive so called growth.

And now the latest laughingstock from an economic debate among idiots (sorry!): Germany’s problem, i.e. the reason why the Germans finally managed to become sustainable by not growing our economy and the related emissions and resource consumption anymore, should be the deflation in the surrounding EU economies.

Did we already forget the dire prescription of all those eminent economists to the EU PIGS? Regain competitiveness! Lower your price and wage levels! Increase productivity! It happens: prices are finally falling in Greece and Italy. Well, I guess nobody in Germany concerns the individual suffering of people loosing jobs or having to work more for less. Here we have anyway the perception that the workers in these countries still enjoy their mezzogiorno, their mediterranean laissez faire. No, Germans' concern is that because of declining prices in these countries no one wants to invest anymore there. Not investing with relatively expensive German capital equipment that is. German economy is hence shrinking as a result. Well, zero growth is from an enlightened macro economic perspective, which values natural and resource assets, not so bad at all, as pointed out above. However the featherbrained complaint about this fact from German wannabe economists shows they never knew what they were and are writing about: first prices in the crisis countries should sink and if they finally do this bad for Germany.

Can’t we for an instant try to have a European perspective?