Can you imagine going to the Parthenon on Monday morning to make an offering to Pallas Athena, perhaps killing a rabbit, to protect your job or prevent any more negative equity on your house? Ridiculous as this may be, this is exactly how the Eurozone is behaving. Not just the Eurozone, of course, after bailing out the financial institutions rewarding their bad behaviour and accumulation of money by giving them *more* money, everybody is now accepting the austerity measures (sacrifices!) imposed on real life so that they can continue making more money. But Europe needs to deal with the consequences of a project derailed many years ago.
The European Union was born in the post-war era as a way to prevent nationalisms from leading into more wars. The spirit of cooperation it created took the project step by step towards industrial, cultural, political, legal, human rights and finally economic integration. And here is where things started to go wrong, because the world had moved on and by the time Europe reached this stage the power of neoliberalism was in full swing and Europe became yet another example of deregulated and out of control financial institutions ruling the roost.
So now, every time it looks like Merkel & Co are coming to the rescue of bankrupt economies the gods (sorry, the Markets) breath in and the FT 100 goes up, when the German taxpayers say “we wont pay” the Markets come tumbling down and we are bombarded with red graphs getting more and more into a panic shade of red. And then the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer (Economy Minister) tells you that if you want the Markets to be happy again you will have to kill another rabbit, or stop sending your kids to school, or pay for private health insurance, or something. One of the first rabbits killed were youth centres which in deprived areas were a lifeline for impoverished and fragmented communities. Cue to riots? There was something else: apart from the police killing a black guy, ethnic minorities were subjected to Stop and Search by the Police 26 times more than the general population [The Guardian]( http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/oct/17/stop-and-search-race-figures). So the Government got tired of being told that the Police are racist and ordered them to stop keeping statistics on this. Changing the rules is as easy as that.
Meanwhile the financial institutions are fighting tooth and nail any attempt at regulation of their speculation and bonuses. The median total remuneration of FTSE 100 chief executives rose from £1m to £4.2m over 12 years. [The Guardian]( http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/sep/28/boardroom-pay-executive-bonuses). From this kind of ivory tower it is that financial institutions give their opinion about Greece. If they want more money they have to agree to further more draconian austerity measures, but they should not be allowed to default, or leave the Euro. In reality Greece or any other troubled economy could default, leave the Euro for a while until they recover, or forever, devalue (like Argentina or Brazil did to give themselves a breather) and adapt gradually to the new situation. They could get help from economies that are not in the same crisis.
Here is another interesting thought: *NOT* the whole world is in a financial crisis, at least not at the same level as the most rabidly free market or neoliberal countries and zones. If people really saw that they would question the economic system, and so they should. Europe could recover its pride and the spirit that originally created this project if only it had the courage to stop appeasing the Markets and implemented economic models at the service of the people.
