Is Microsoft even madder and more autocratic than the EU?

So there I was, posting away merrily, when my sentence disappeared, Word disappeared and on came Windows to tell me it was reconfiguring stuff to download stuff, none of which I wanted.

“This could take several minutes,” it announced. It took twenty. Then my netbook wouldn’t start.  So I chose Repair startup. It told me that some f**king clown had loaded some software inappropriate for my netbook, and this had now damaged the startup settings. It said they would now atempt to repair their own torpedo hole.
“This could take over an hour,” another panel said. But instead, it took five minutes to say it couldn’t repair the problem and I should get in touch with my hardware manufacturer.

So that’s it. Until I get back to my laptop, the Slog will be dormant. But Microsoft, maker of universlly sh*t software, can pull this kind of stunt because it is beyond the reach of the law or the will of politicians to stop them. This post comes courtesy of a chum’s laptop; and so while I’m here analysing the nature of f**kwits, we might as well talk about the EU.

Manuelo Barroso, I’m told, is gaining power in Brussels. The reason? “He rarely makes mistakes and never says anything radical”. So there you have it: how to become Holy Brussels Emperor without really trying.

In Greece meanwhile, the property tax is about to be doubled, and the can of worms Coalition at the top is doing the Troika’s bidding without courage or fairness, this being the opposite of without fear or favour. But Evangelo Venizelos says the horizontal cutting is now over, and that the economic programme of 2012 will proceed as planned, “with the highest degree of social sensibility, and special payrolls [judges, state hospital doctors, military personnel and others] won’t be affected.” But in 2013, the Fat One promises, “there will be no horizontal cuts.”

I’m thrilled about this in a baffled sort of way, but confused about the social sensibility bollocks. The addition of the emergency property tax to electricity bills in 2011 and the inability of many people to pay either the Greek Public Power Company (DEH) bills or the emergency tax. Greek  citizen debt has skyrocketed to 1.1 billion euro in unpaid bills.

However, the management of DEH granted themselves a family allowance of 3,500 euro per month. That should allow their families to avoid penury while evading tax.

In Spain, full bailout is about to happen (if Berlin is still up for it) and Sicily looks as if it might up anchor and declare independence from Italy, possibly to form the People’s Congress of Cosa Nostras. The worse the ClubMed economic data gets, and the more surging export figures emerge from Merkelania, the more money flows to the safe North and makes a ClubMed collapse inevitable.

Christine Lagarde’s reaction (under orders from the White House) is to stop lending at all to the eurozone. David Cameron’s is to demand some sock pulling and sleeve up-rolling. But Mario Draghi has come out fighting, saying that the euro is “irreversible”. If he means by this that it has no reverse gear, and thus cannot be stopped from ploughing into an ocean of smelly-doo-doo big jobbies, he is correct.

More on Olympic disorganisation later if I can get access.

 

EU SKETCH: From this point, anything is possible

The Slog interviews some experts on the subject of Sovereign Identity

Following the German proposal for a system of Gauleiters throughout the eurozone, merchant and investment banks have been quick to respond with ideas as to how the EU as a whole could be monetized, and thus wipe out its sovereign debt problem. Already, leading lights in the New York Stock and Chicago Mercantile Exchanges have begun to involve the Frankfurt Dax in a scheme to create the world’s first Sovereign Exchange Market (SEM), in which shares in the 27 EU States might ultimately be offered on various bourses, subject to the success or otherwise of the Initial Public Offering (IPO) planned for Greece on two new Singapore and Shanghai SEMs later this year.

“Basically, I think we have to view this new space as, you know, kind of like when VW bought Skoda,” explained Todd Runtwolski, newly appointed Head of Nation State Marketing at Metro-Goering-Norodny in New York. “So although nobody wants to buy Greece right on account of it’s just donkeys struggling under the weight of obese tax evaders, now the actual sovereignty has been the subject of a takeover by Merkel, Schauble, Draghi, then we think investors will see this as a one-off mega-mezzanine opportunity.”

Runtwolski…’mezzanine opportunity’

Critics point out that The Gauleiter Memorandum* represents a hostile takeover widely opposed by Greece’s current owners the Greeks, but Mr Runtwolski brushed this aside as “negadive thinking”.

“Look, we’re all here for the shareholders in the end, right?” he asked assertively, “It’s all a question of ‘are you in or are you out?’ There’s 11.5 million of these guys and they’re starving. They’ll take the money if we cut them in. And if they don’t, then we’ll cut them out. It’s a win-win from our perspective”.

Asked about how MGN would set about the knotty problem of valuation, Runtwolski added, “It’s all a question of directional money-flow. Traditionally, the German State has been associated – unfairly in my view – with a one-way upstream surge of stuff that cynics might call asset-stripping. But really that only happened in minority sectors like Renaissance paintings, national treasures and slave workers. This time we expect the wealth of Germany to trickle down to Athens. It’s simple tried and tested Reaganomics really.”

But Todd was more circumspect on the subject of rebranding.

“That’s an area of some sensidividy,” he conceded, “Greece is a fairly well-established brand with strong associations of holidays, and a very strong smell of kebabs. But in the sovereign investor space, it mainly has connotations of crooks, food-poisoning, and a widespread lack of paperwork. So I guess we’re gonna need a liddle consultancy input on that one”.

I spoke about this issue to leading Sovereign Image advisers Bellend & Pottingshed. High-flying account director Jeremy Gnome-Orrals ran the lucrative Gadaffi account until its unfortunate demise last year, but from his newly-created position as Rogue State Business Developer, he gave us the benefit of his experience.

Gnome-Orrals….bottom-feeder

“Rebranding would be essential,” opined Jems, “And off the top of my head I’d suggest something like New Hellenic Enterprises or whatever. But that’s just dealing off the top of my head. Dealing from the bottom of the pack – do we have a salute here? – Zorba Creative Industries.  We’d need to go back to the classic history as a feint to help the target market forget, well, pretty much everything after 1670 really.”

Further down the line, I asked him, could other rebranding be adopted as the Berlin-dominated EU gradually took over fiscal responsibility for every sovereign member?

“Absolutely,” he enthused, “I mean, gosh, the possibilities are endless. Belgium, you see, is pretty useless and largely thought of in terms of bureacrats, mayonnaise and chips. But rebranded as Lower Goldman Saxony…..well, the sky’s the limit.”

After the events of the last week, I’m not sure there are any limits now. We shall see.

* The Gauleiter Memorandum, soon to be a Hollywood blockbuster starring people who don’t look anything like Tim Geithner, Angela Merkel, Mario Draghi, Wolfgang Schauble, Nicolas Sarkozy or Lucas Papademos.