The European Directorate, false technocrats and the God of Markets

Merkozy plan their colonial empire

Pepe Escobar, as always, makes great remarks in his latest analysis, this time on the European Union/Eurozone but there are two semantic things I cannot agree with:

1. His use of the term Politburo for the EU's totalitarian de facto government. They are not socialist enough (not even slightly), I'd rather use a more neutral term such as Directorate or Directory.
2. His suggestion of Zeus being the god of Markets, when everybody knows that this office belongs to his sidekick, Hermes, best known as Mercury (etymologically related to market, indeed).

Mercury was also god of thieves, for good reason indeed.

Still his description of the Directorate is very informative. The Eurozone is constituted by 17 member-states, which, in theory at least, hold control of the single-currency zone by means of the informal Eurogroup and by voting without the other 8 states (UK, Denmark, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia and Lithuania) at Ecofin meetings. In these institutions the member states have voting rights either by reason of being a member state or proportional to demographic weight. 

Never mind that Van Rompuy wants to deprive states of their voting rights... it doesn't matter. 

What Escobar highlights is how, for all practical matters, the Eurozone is ruled by an 8 member directorate, in which only two states are represented somehow: Germany (Prime Minister Merkel, conservative) and France (President Sarkozy, conservative). The other six members are:

• IMF boss Christine Lagarde, close ally of Sarkozy and former chair of international law firm Baker and McKenzie.
• ECB boss Mario Draghi, former vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International and godfather of Mario Monti (the new puppet ruler of Italy and another Goldman Sachs man).
• European Commission President Jose Manuel Durao Barroso (former PM of Portugal, conservative)
• European Council President Herman van Rompuy (former PM of Belgium, conservative)
• European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs Olli Rehn (center-right)
• Chairman of the Ecofin Jean-Claude Juncker, former PM of Luxemburg (conservative)

So we have a bunch of bureaucrats, almost all of them conservative (in spite of the EPP only holding 36% of the seats in Strasbourg), most of them from Northern Europe (in spite of Southern Europe being quite more important in terms of population), lead by Merkozy.

... there's only one road map ahead as far as the EU is concerned; implacable "austerity", duly supervised by Madame Lagarde and her IMF minions.

It is this gang of eight who have appointed the so-called technocrat Prime Ministers in Rome and Athens, Monti and Papademos. And have done so without going through any sort of elections. These supposedly efficient managers who stink to the single thought ideology of late decadent neoliberalism are there to impose that workers pay to the banks what the states have borrowed and quite a good deal of interest... and blood if need be (no second Icelands allowed).

From Greek to Latin, the problem with Greece and Italy has nothing to do with the EU's alleged dysfunctional periphery. The point is the excesses of casino capitalism - financial capital operating in total deregulation. Thus the pre-eminence of this glossy/shady character - the liquid modernity technocrat - averse to democracy yet legitimate enough to call for popular repression, all in the name of satisfying the Almighty financial God. 

 The union of equals has become a colonial empire in the name of the markets.

"Merkozy" - responsible for 48% of the eurozone's gross domestic product - and the Gang of Eight are now first-class practitioners of neo-colonial power.

More like new, ex novo, colonial power against their southern partners who, so naively, believed in the European dream. If this bankster neocolonial exploitation continues the EU will explode.