The president of Cyprus really is completely blind: the wreckage of the Cypriot economy is all around him ’ courtesy of the euro
Spare a thought for Nicos Anastasiades, the president of Cyprus and the only blind man in that tiny kingdom of those with their eyes newly re-opened: ‘I express my warm gratitude and deep appreciation towards the Cypriot people for the maturity and spirit of responsibility they have shown at a critical time for the stability of the Cypriot economy.’
All the people did was wait for the banks to re-open! Talk about lead balloons, but then the next day Nicos said that the good news was that at least Cyprus was still in the eurozone…
This man really is completely blind: the wreckage of the Cypriot economy is all around him – courtesy of the euro. But then, if my ancient Greek serves me right, his surname means ‘the son of the man who stood above everything’, while his Christian name means ‘victory’!
Related
So the blind leader of the people who stands above it all thinks that the Cypriot economy has been miraculously ‘stabilised’ by a €10.0 billion loan from Frankfurt – with added austerity as the coupon? It would all have been better managed by the Cyclops – at least he had one eye that worked.
THE MEANS WHEREBY the floored economy of Cyprus, which will now enter an unknowable and unquantifiable period of severe depression, can ever hope to recover, deprived of many local people’s confiscated savings, is unknown.
Presumably the maths on how this loan can ever be repaid was worked out on the back of a fag-packet, which was conveniently thrown into the trash-can somewhere between Berlin and Frankfurt.
Pictured above: Nicos Anastasiades, president of Cyprus, holding up his hands as Angela Merkel has a gun to his back
The real point is this: the equally hapless PIGS are in exactly the same position. Mind you, Italy is waking up fast, thanks to Beppe Grillo, who can tell the government bad news while making them laugh.
Content from our partners
His Five Star Movement took 25.5 per cent of the vote in the 2013 elections. That’s not to be sniffed at, as this is reality dawning: Grillo won’t form any coalition with any party or professional politician – they are either morally or intellectually corrupt in his opinion – and unfit to represent the people.
So no coalition for this man with his eyes wide open… and without him and his growing vote, Italy currently has no government, and gets on perfectly well day-to-day without one. But another election is certain – perhaps as early as June.
MEANWHILE, ANGELA MERKEL maintains her fiscal and monetary attack on the rest of the eurozone, with bail-out loans-for-austerity her only message. The fact that this policy is driving GDPs down, and therefore debt-to-GDP ratios up, should surprise no one.
The fact that this is a road to Erewhon for Germany and a road to Nowhere for everyone else hasn’t yet dawned on the political elites who, like Nicos Anastasides, treat the euro as a Holy Grail. (I could mention Mario Draghi and Christine Lagarde of the Troika, who structured the latest bail-out, and many others besides.)
The fact that the single currency is the main cause of this month’s record 12 per cent euro-zone unemployment, with 26.3 per cent in Spain – and 56 per cent for its under-25s – and it’s worse for Greece. Watch out Nicos, that’s where you and Cyprus are now headed too.
It is strangely symmetrical that Germany has racked up €1,000,000,000,000 of trade surpluses within the eurozone – that’s one trillion euros – over the last decade, and that the Bundesbank has calculated that Germany’s actual and collateral debts for propping up the same eurozone now come to the same sum – €1,000,000,000,000.
Will Merkel mislead the German electorate and squander the wealth and work of Germany by sleepwalking into an economic eurogeddon? Yes, disaster looms for the madcap scheme of imposing the single currency on seventeen completely disparate economies, the tool a shortly-to-be-defunct and deeply dysfunctional euro.
It is up to those new insurgent parties of left and right – Grillo’s Five Star Movement, UKIP, Germany’s UKIP-like Alternative für Deutschland – to kick out these brain-dead euro-scheming politicians before they destroy the wealth of nations.
Read more from Stephen Hill
Tweet
Don’t miss out on the best of Spear’s articles – sign up to the Spear’s weekly newsletter
[related_companies]