Stimulus or Austerity

What do we hear from the movers and shakers? Still, austerity.

Greece is imploding, and even if moderates win this Sunday, it's unlikely that they'll be able to force Germany's Angela Merkel to abandon her stance: austerity as the solution to all their economic ills. Spain is now the problem de jour: another bank/bonds crisis, but again, European bonds, the only interim solution, are nixed by Merkel.

Merkel has her reasons. Germans have their history as justification: the Weimar Republic collapsed under inflation that saw the mark tumble to over 1 trillion to the dollar, wiping out the middle class. After that, the Nazis took over.

Ironically, but also logically, some of the beneficiaries of the austerity-driven depression that's overtaking Europe's periphery are politicians of the extreme right, like Greece's neo-Nazi Golden Dawn.

If Germans could realize that their resistance to meaningful bailouts and stimulus to create growth is creating little Weimar's all over Europe, perhaps they'd re-think their reluctance.

Angela's conservatives are in the driver's seat in Europe. In the US, conservatives are in a similar position, even though they don't control the federal government. The tea party dominated Republicans control the House, and effectively stymie any stimulatory policy in the Senate: 41 votes out of 100 = a blocking minority. Plus, by controlling a majority of states, Republicans are able to lay off public employees wholesale--partly to balance budgets, but partly because unionized public employees are the only organized group left that can counter their lock-step promotion of corporate and wealthy/selfish class interests. Conservatives see public employees as "the greatest threat" to the US economy. However, the net effect of state (and local) layoffs has been to offset any growth in employment in the private sector, one of the prime reasons why unemployment went up a notch last month.

Given their antagonism to public employees, it's not surprising that Republicans refuse to allow the major Federal grants (stimulus expenditures) necessary to prevent the layoffs or hire back the teachers and police needed.

The US doesn't have the equivalent of Greece's Golden Dawn or its left-wing Syriza, but Republican intransigence and Democratic waffling surely justify them.

Instead, we have the Koch brothers, Karl Rove and the millionaire/billionaire funded super-pacs on one side, and only the weakened Occupy movement on the other. So, our equivalent of the Nazi takeover of Weimar would put corporations and their owners in control.

Why "only" the Occupy movement? Tom Barrett, the defeated old-line Democrat in Wisconsin is your answer. Centrist resistance may win barely enough votes in the General Election against Koch-Rove billions, but what people really yearn for is the kind of policy (only more so) that Obama campaigned on but only half-delivered. Incremental measures aren't solutions.

Even with Obama, the 1%, or the Selfish Class, face little resistance to their takeover. Long-term depression could result, paralleling the history of the late Roman Empire.