Euro-zone jobless rate hit record highs … The number of people out of work in the euro zone climbed further in August reaching a fresh record high, underscoring the hardship that the currency area's fiscal crisis is inflicting on households, and suggesting any economic recovery is some way off. Eurostat, the European Union's official statistics agency, said Monday that 18.196 million people were without jobs in August, an increase of 34,000 from the previous month and the highest total since records for the 17 nations that use the euro were first compiled in January 1995. – MarketWatch
Dominant Social Theme: Capitalism provides us with terrible consequences.
Free-Market Analysis: It is really sad to watch what's going on in Europe. One can almost imagine reading the history books about this period and getting a completely different picture of what is going on than the reality that should be evident to anyone who has lived through this time.
Appearances are important! Those who follow free-market economics know what needs to be done to pull Europe out of its slump. But the reporting gives no clue of the reality.
With a grim mercilessness, the mainstream press – controlled by the power elite that has evidently and obviously created this mess – tallies the damages and makes sure everyone knows how horrible it is.
It's like watching a slow-motion car wreck where you can see what's going to happen ahead of time but there's nothing you can do about it.
And one gets the feeling this is part of the larger, deliberate approach, from a journalistic perspective, anyway. We are being shown that the cold-blooded takedown of a continent of 400 million people is not only feasible it is actually ongoing. Here's more from the article:
The currency area's unemployment rate is likely to rise further in the coming months, since recent surveys indicate that businesses plan to cut jobs in response to an uncertain economic outlook. A survey of purchasing managers released Monday found manufacturing companies trimmed their payrolls for the eighth straight month in September, although at the slowest pace since March.
Rising unemployment will likely curb consumer spending and hinder a return to economic growth. The euro-zone economy contracted at an annualized rate of 0.7% in the second quarter, and most recent surveys and economic data suggest it shrank again in the third quarter.
The continued rise in the jobless rate suggests that the European Central Bank's efforts to bolster the economy, including injections of more than EUR1 trillion ($1.3 trillion) of cheap money into the system and reduction of the main central bank rate to a record low, are having little impact.
The sad statistics are in a sense clinical because they give little sense of the human suffering. Nor do they remind us of why this is taking place or how it came to pass.
In numerous articles, we've tried to provide a perspective that runs counter to the mainstream approach. That's what alternative 'Net journalism should do, in our humble opinion. More than that, it at least contributes to the historical record.
And so we repeat: This is a kind of cold-blooded takedown.
It began in the bowels of a ruined Europe some 60 years ago. While there have been convulsive efforts to lay the responsibility for the EU on German Nazis, the larger effort is evidently and obviously a power elite affair and recognizes no one country.
Its ideology is purely international and its goal is apparently to create a steppingstone to one-world government. Those in charge of the EU care not a whit about how many families and communities are ground up under the brutal wheels of this insupportable contraption.
Lying has been the main signature of the EU. The elite planned an EU superstate, but the union was presented as a trading facility. At every stage it has been presented as less than it was.
When the euro itself was adopted, this was heralded as a great step forward even though –
as has been admitted – those in the EU's inner circle already knew it was doomed to failure.
The idea was that sooner or later a great financial crisis brought on by the failing euro would allow the powers-that-be to insist a political union accompany a financial one.
What is less well known – though we can surmise it with some certainty – is that the great bank-lending spree of German, French and US banks to Southern PIGS was also planned as a deliberate disaster.
Is it possible to believe that the clear-eyed bankers of Europe did not understand what the policymakers already knew? In other words, the politicians understood the euro in its current condition was doomed but the bankers did not?
That's hard to believe, isn't it? Just as hard to believe as the idea that those involved with the profligate lending didn't realize they were setting up the PIGS's sovereign governments for utter euro failure.
In fact, it was all a kind of payoff, in retrospect. The top elites of various PIGS countries got billions that have never been accounted for and everyone else got … austerity.
It is the same kind of austerity that the IMF has generously provided to the developing world. We've charted the tag-team approach numerous times. First, the World Bank makes huge and useless loans that are embezzled. Then the IMF comes in and "loans" the country a bailout.
The IMF demands higher taxes, lower benefits and "privatization." This is just the recipe that the IMF is applying to the PIGS currently.
The riots in Europe are no different than the ones that took place in Argentina some ten years ago. Of course, Argentina has never recovered from those miserable days. Economics in Argentina is more confused than ever and the country is headed down the path of another inevitable bankruptcy.
Economics are confused in Europe, as well. It is an elite process, in fact, to confuse people thoroughly about what needs to be done.
The best thing that could happen to the struggling southern populations of Europe – given the current difficulties – would be a breakdown of the euro and resumption of national currencies. Then local central banks could devalue at will.
Even better would be the abolition of monopoly central banking and the implementation of private currencies and private banking – hopefully, featuring gold and silver (especially silver, the people's money for eons).
Along with the implementation of private currencies should come a massive reduction of regulations and taxes. The economies of these countries should in a sense be privatized.
It is a sign of the times that so few in the mainstream media are even laying out these sensible proposals. Instead, there is much reporting on the "levels" of taxation that countries can afford and whether the European Central Bank's bond-buying policy (using money from nothing) will be effective.
The muddling of economic policy has been going on for decades, even centuries. The idea of laissez faire is one that elites regard with merciless and deadly contempt.
We predicted much of this, of course. Once one comprehends and accepts the presence of "directed history," current events become explicable and even predictable.
In a series of articles over the past years we warned that the policies of the EU were leading directly and inexorably to economic depression and a series of social explosions.
We warned that the Internet itself – what we call the Internet Reformation – was going to make it tough for the elites to implement their plans without considerable pushback.
What WE didn't quite understand is the full extent of elite mercilessness and desperation. What is taking place in Europe is business-as-usual and there is little deviation from the "rigor" of elite solutions.
The elites have shown us clearly they have no solution to the exposure they've received from the Internet. And they've also illustrated amply that because they have no answer, they are simply prepared to disregard this new reality. They blunder ahead as if the 21st century was the 20th.
As we've predicted many times, these two trends – the determinedly ignorant invincibility of modern banking elites and the growing awareness of ground-down masses – are going to collide with increasing violence.
The controlled demolition of Europe continues apace. The idea is apparently to inflict so much chaos that people will simply bow to inevitable centralizations of power and authority. But in this Internet era, such elite strategies may not prove so successful as in the past.
This latter realization, if one accepts it, provides us with a view of Europe that is at once tragic and triumphant. Out of the ruins of Europe may arise something that is better … and freer. We don't know, of course, but perhaps the groundwork has been laid.
