At the official opening of the Greek “Presidency” of the EU (a purely symbolic title bestowed upon every EU country for 6 months) the Greek Minister of Culture, Mr. Panos Panagiotopoulos, started his speech with the following words:
The economies of countries like China and countries of the Middle East have proved that the old continent [Europe] – with its past and current attempts regarding economy and its productive base – is left behind. The cost of labour and a series of other factors have made many of the sectors of the European economy non-competitive, therefore, non-sustainable. European countries each individually and all together as part of the European family are forced to explore alternative processes of production that are competitive.
At this point the crowd breaks into laughter!
The shocking thing here is that this man bluntly spells out what is going on in Europe, why the extreme austerity measures are being imposed upon the people and why the economies of EU members are being intentionally destroyed bringing unemployment levels to 28% in Greece, 26% in Spain (60% & 54% for those under 25 in Greece and Spain respectively)…
The goal of the EU is to bring the cost of labor down to the level where Europe can compete with China.
Wha-wha-what??
China is a dictatorship where the average HOUSEHOLD earns $2,100 a year! (In some places, the average as high as $4,700 and as low as $1,600) We’re talking average HOUSEHOLD income here people.
How does one compete with artificially low labor costs? You either create technology that does the jobs people normally do, which means that a lot of people will be losing their jobs to these new machines, or you get your own costs of labor down, by slashing wages. Since the former approach costs a LOT of money and technology to implement, the latter approach is what’s being adopted – get European wages down to Chinese levels and Europe will be able to compete.
Sounds far fetched? Here is a Forbes article that shows how the income levels in some high-tech Chinese jobs are now on par with US jobs as US wage levels drop.
How do you get the people of entire countries of Europe to go along with a plan that will essentially wipe out their standards of living so that corporations can become more profitable vs. the Chinese?
Just follow these simple steps:
Step 1 – Take away a country’s currency so that you can control its money supply.
Step 2 – Then create an economic crisis, and make it worse by forcing extreme austerity measures on the country.
Step 3 – Then take the country’s debt and turn it into cold hard cash and assets. This is done by “bailing” the country out periodically, so that the interest payments on the debt can be paid back to you (the banks), thus more than DOUBLING the overall debt of the country (loaning more money to pay the interest on the original loan, predatory lending anyone?).
Step 4 – Then impose extreme taxes on the people of the country (50-75% of whom have lost their jobs) and when they can’t pay the taxes due to making no money anymore, seize their homes so that you can keep turning that debt into more hard cash and assets.
At this point, so many of the people will be out of work and quite a lot of them homeless, that the $400 month job will sound better than nothing, and voila…
Step 5 – You are now competitive with China!
But won’t the people rise up and resist this destruction of their country and the downgrading of their standard of living so that the corporations can become more profitable vs. the Chinese? Well, they won’t if you change their culture to accept this change of lifestyle. China has 1.36 billion people, ruled ruthlessly by only a few dictators. If they were to rise up , their sheer numbers could eliminate these leaders and they could become a democracy tomorrow. But they won’t do that right now, because through fear and intimidation, executions, strict control of the news and media, and overall cultural upbringing – the average Chinese person is convinced that this is the way life has to be, and they put up with it.
Step 6 – Change the cultures of each EU country so that they accept this downgrading of life.
The exact same procedures of fear and repressions are being use in Greece, and other EU countries, to change the culture into this new “economic culture” that is being forced on them by the EU. That is why the Minister of CULTURE of Greece was giving a speech about MONEY, and why his General Secretary used the term “Culture is Economy”, because the EU’s sole purpose is to turn the European culture into a culture of profitable private corporate interests. And so far, they are getting away with it.
