We are letting two rigid incompetents run the show. Where are the media in all this?
Unconscious understatement of the Decade award goes to Der Spiegel this morning, which opines that Merkel campaigning for Sarkozy in the French Presidential election ‘poses risks’. Sorry to differ on this one Spiegers, but it actually poses a gross and unwarranted interference in the political affairs of another nation. But then, the Fuhrerine in Berlin has form when it comes to that sort of malarkey.
When George Papandreou announced last year that Greece would hold a referendum on further austerity measures, the German Chancellor and the little poodle she hates but cannot be without bluntly cancelled the idea. They then installed their candidate. Two months later, they don’t seem to be able to get on with him either.
Two weeks ago, Merkel and her mad professor Wolfgang Strangelove tabled a memo to all EU finance ministers suggesting that an EU commissioner should suspend democracy in Greece until all the creditors were first in the spending queue and being paid regularly. Within 48 hours, EU Truth Minister Sarkozy declared it an unmemo, and said – in front of a hundred journalists – that there had “never been any intention to interfere with Greek sovereignty”. Bollocks.
Now Merkel wants the monthly repayments to go into an escow account. And the IMF’s great Leader Christine Lagarde says “No more help until you agree to every last austerity and reform condition”.
This morning, the MSM from end to end are treating this arrival at a stalemate the way they’re covered the snow for the last three days: “Christ – how did that happen?”
These two really are the Belles of St Trillions. Between them – Merkel in emptying the Bundesbank in search of personal glory, and Lagarde for emptying the French Treasury during her spell as ‘Economics Minister’ – have wasted untold amounts of taxpayers’ money propping up a currency area whose ill design was entirely down to their countries, and whose members are only in the damned thing thanks to German corruption (Italy) and French corruption (Greece). And in Rome too, when the corrupt fascist Berlusconi started answering back, he too was replaced by the technocrat Monti.
What troubles me most of all is that – twenty short years ago – any country even suggesting such interference in the affairs of others on this scale would’ve derailed the European Project, and vindicated the fears of every eurosceptic in Britain. For a German leader to now do it – and not one single UK press title condemn it out of hand – tells Sloggers what they already knew well enough: the media need the same moraloctomy that the bankers deserve. Mind you, if they’re going to get it on the NHS, they need to get a move on: the queue is getting longer and longer, and Lansley has virtually destroyed NHS morale single-handed.
What the ‘proper’ media will now do is dismiss this piece as “a rant”. I was honoured to find myself described by James Delingpole in his column yesterday as ‘Ranter Ward’, for daring to suggest that he didn’t know any better than any other person on the planet what the climate would or wouldn’t do over the next 100 years. But “it’s just a rant” is vying these days with “grumpy old man” as the way to slag off somebody whose argument you can’t deconstruct. More pointedly, it has become the weapon of choice for the spineless who would rather do nothing.
A week ago, I posted a long and well-documented piece here suggesting that there was rather more nasty stuff hiding between Angela Merkel’s ample cleavage than people realise. Dear old Duk’n Donuts, bless him, dismissed this as ‘reds under the bed’, a comment which was well-preserved in aspic, but still thirty years out of date. Reds and beds had nothing to do with it: the post was a behavioural study of the German leader. The lesson learned above all in market research is that data about what people do is infinitely more reliable than what they say they believe should be done. The article raised doubts about the instincts of this seemingly unstoppable politician: if anyone has hard evidence to the contrary, do let me know.
The Fuhrerine in Berlin isn’t a Communist or a Friedmanite or a Christian Democrat or anything else: my thesis was and remains that the only thing she believes in is the triumph of Angela Merkel – at whatever cost. My view remains that her motives are suspect, and it’s time the media stopped being polite about it.
In the same way, I think the way in which Christine Lagarde got the IMF job is suspicious. I think the way DSK got banged up until she was elected is suspicious. I think the way she got help in the electoral process from the American Fed is suspicious. I know that five out of the seven economic forecasts she made while working for Sarkozy were wrong, and she did nothing to stem the ridiculous spending of the French State. I think that in 2010, she lied about the safety of the French banks, and connived in making the EU stress tests easy to pass. Once again, all these allegations have been posted before at The Slog, and are based on evidence that ranges from circumstantial to mathematical.
So there we are. Cue lots of threads from Liberal Conspiracy telling me what a women-hating, Nazi misogynist I am.
Further reading: The rigid ‘conformism’ of Angela Markel – real or myth?
The Slog 