An open letter to the Troïka - Stop the slaughter
Representatives of the 'Troïka' (European Commission; IMF; European Central Bank):
There are a few things I don't understand and I wish you could explain them to me.
I keep reading decisions like this last one today (a day in which public TV was stopped in Greece):
We need to know that you are seeking the right advice before action. That you are aware of the consequences of your decisions. That they are legitimate.
I'm not an economist, so if I need to understand economics, I will consider learning from scholars in economy independent of any established power. Should I have your political power, I would take advices from the most competent, Nobel prize, economists in the best department of economy of universities. I would consider seriously the arguments, for example, of Nobel prize Joseph Stiglitz at Stanford University. But no need to go that far.
I wonder where you gather the advices from and how you make your decisions. I have the chance to work in a university and to have an international network of colleagues in many universities and various departments. I don’t remember of a colleague economist telling me that the current economical policy supposed to take countries like Greece or Portugal out of the crisis is correct. All say to me on the contrary how much it is wrong: massive cuts mean massive recession, while a crises needs investments, borrowings and devaluation when possible. Let me put it in my own naive words: I don’t understand how making a country poor is supposed to make it wealthy. A country, do you know it, works not like a person nor like an enterprise. A country is a country, and political economics is not private economics.
Many economists, maybe except some ideological market gurus, say, and have said in a huge number of newspaper articles and books, that the current policy is absurd and terribly dangerous. Haven’t you read their papers? Do you think you have the competence to evaluate them? You are elected reasonable people, you are not the Genius of the Carpathes. Although this one was a champion of austerity measures and made Romania a debt-free country.
Do you think economists in universities are dreamers? Then why do you occasionally ask them for advice? How do you judge if you need to use the opinion of this or rather that person? Please help us understand how you opt for the guy in red or the guy in blue to help you take the right decisions.
To draw a parallel: how do you choose if you need to consider scientists who tell you about climate change caused by human activity, or those who deny it? How do you choose between evolution or creationism? A wise decision is, if you are ignorant, to see where the knowledgeable people are. We have universities, and there you will obviously find the right persons. And you will see that there are massive consensus on a huge number of things, despite the cliché that academics debate and disagree all the time. To make an analogy: linguists can disagree to some degree on how much language is a cultural or a natural thing. But virtually all linguists agree on how languages are structured, and all will say that other issues are debated. Should you wish to know more about language, please look at what linguists usually think is true and you’ll head to the right direction. Should you need to know more about nuclear power, ask prominent scholars in nuclear physics. Should you need to better understand evolution, please go and ask the Society of Biologists of your country.
I am not an economist, but I do rely on economists, those who deserve the name and have serious research records and recognition in the Academy. The Academy is, should you need to be reminded, the institution where professionals do research and have specific knowledge.
Well, I am not an economist but I am not a politician either. Maybe you politicians currently leading Europe and managing the Greek debt do know how to take wise decisions in economy without the help of trustworthy economists?
I don't know but I doubt it.
Most politicians are not economists either. Even when they lead economical and financial institutions. Catherine Lagarde's highest degree is a MPhil in Labour law from Aix University in Southern France. She is a lawyer, and certainly she’s very apt to defend the cause she likes, but how come she should take major decisions bearing impact on the whole world, taking individuals to life and to death sometimes, is not all clear in my understanding. Merkel is not either a Nobel prize in economy, nor was Thatcher, who made her policy by listening to a specific, non-consensual, theorist of market and economy. Was it easy for market lobbyists to manipulate them? To manipulate Ronald Reagan, the actor, or George W. Bush?
I don’t know and I wouldn't like to make a guess.
Well, politicians, you have your staff. The budget ministers for example. Or maybe they are not these economists you would think they are. Well, lawyer Lagarde was that too; and to keep the French example, Cahuzac, first budget minister of François Hollande, was an plastic surgeon, believe it or not, before he was convicted of massive tax fraud. A clownery with the dramatic consequences, maybe.
I am a little bit confused. Yes, I will gladly admit that politicians have to be skilled people and not necessarily economists, of course, but then who are their councilors? Who are councilors of the "Troïka"which dictates what to do to the Greek government? To whom belong the minds who meet in ‘think tanks’ and give advice to you?
I don't know; probably this can be found on the web, but it will be names without a meaning.
Sometimes, yes, the people in politics seek an advice from a well-known economist in a university. I know that. But in any case, they do take decisions themselves. And what if they do so without asking the right persons exactly what these decisions imply? They may fail to realize that the grounds for these decisions may be totally wrong.
Economists at the IMF: We know about the basic errors in Excel files that have already impacted huge costs. Prevision makers at the European Union Commission: also made big mistakes, see statements by Juncker, former head of the Eurogroup, in Athens this week: ‘It was our mistake to listen to the market gurus’. Are you seeking advice at banks or private financial institutions? It might make sense when considering how much the private sector and the deregulated market benefits from the crisis. But I can’t believe this: it would be like asking if you take your advices in China on the basis that Chinese companies own now a serious part of the Greek economy thanks to the restructuring of the country.
I don’t know, but maybe the fact that Monti and Draghi were at some point people from Goldman Sachs means something. I don’t want to imagine that there’s a plot: people sharing interests need not to make a plot in order to act together with coordination. It’s automatic. Everyone in the free market ideology promotes it without any plot needed.
You can’t be seeking advice from financial notation agencies who made such huge errors as not predicting at all the subprimes crisis, unless you are out of your mind. So yes, isn’t there ideology after all? Ideology may not always be bad, if ideology is a theory of the society. But common sense has to prevail and this is called pragmaticism, and is opposed to the deregulation as well as to the type of austerity you are forcing in Greece.
The Troïka - what a deserved name evoking immense icy landscapes - says to the Greek - and similar things can be said about Portugal - cut your costs, and sell out public property to private ‘investors’ (i.e. profit-making businessmen).
This makes a lot of people poor. The public servants who are fired, but also the more vulnerable people in the society who don’t get any serious support, protection, social security. All these people stop consuming and as a result companies sell less and fire people, shops close down, and again consumption lowers etc. You know well the vicious circle but you say, despite all the contrary advices by respected economists, that it will heal the country to do so and not even make it harsher. Either it's false, or it's magic, or it's crazy, or this actually serves the market gurus ideology.
Please explain.
Who would buy a public institution which gets privatized, for example public transport, if they don’t think they can make a benefit out of it? Of course no-one; therefore these institutions are potentially beneficiary. Then, I don’t understand why the State sells them. It’s exactly as selling your boat to people who will fish and make money while you will be spending your capital and lose longer-term income. Who would suggest to a Portuguese fisherman to sell his boat instead of fish? Which wise financial institution would insist that you sell your shop and poorly retire instead of lending to you some money to refurbish it and make a better living for the years to come?
Please explain. Maybe you will tell us that 'things are more complicated'. Are they more complicated than what economists do in research papers which only they understand? More complicated than what a Nobel prize in economy can grasp (and by the way do YOU understand such 'more complicated' things, are you the Genius of the Carpathes)? Do they ignore some of the facts? Are there undisclosed facts? Or are you, yourselves, under the domination of some other, non-democratic, superpower in the hands of financial oligarchs? Am I touching here a truth? Are you aware?
Many questions, few answers.
I am not an economist, nor is the crowd in Athens, nor is the crowd of Occupy Wall Street, nor is the people who made the long sitting in Madrid. This is the people, and the people asks you, before a revolution happens. If you don’t explain to us individuals why this economical slaughter is necessary, with real and serious arguments, one day - maybe sooner than you think -, you will need to explain it to an ulcerated crowd with little patience.
We don’t understand how making a country poor is supposed to make it wealthy.
There are a few things I don't understand and I wish you could explain them to me.
I keep reading decisions like this last one today (a day in which public TV was stopped in Greece):
"The Troika opened the backdoor for a wage below 586 euros by issuing a ministerial decision, cancelling the definition of the minimum salary by law, as it was initially provided by the decision of the Ministerial Council of the Ministry of Labor. In a meeting which was held at the Ministry on June 12" (Greek Reporter).As makers of decisions bearing direct impact on people’s lives, it is your duty to take a few minutes to answer and explain these decisions to me and all of us. After all, if we are in a democracy, we the people are responsible for the election of the people in power who give missions to you, and you need to respond of the fairness and quality of your decisions.
We need to know that you are seeking the right advice before action. That you are aware of the consequences of your decisions. That they are legitimate.
I'm not an economist, so if I need to understand economics, I will consider learning from scholars in economy independent of any established power. Should I have your political power, I would take advices from the most competent, Nobel prize, economists in the best department of economy of universities. I would consider seriously the arguments, for example, of Nobel prize Joseph Stiglitz at Stanford University. But no need to go that far.
I wonder where you gather the advices from and how you make your decisions. I have the chance to work in a university and to have an international network of colleagues in many universities and various departments. I don’t remember of a colleague economist telling me that the current economical policy supposed to take countries like Greece or Portugal out of the crisis is correct. All say to me on the contrary how much it is wrong: massive cuts mean massive recession, while a crises needs investments, borrowings and devaluation when possible. Let me put it in my own naive words: I don’t understand how making a country poor is supposed to make it wealthy. A country, do you know it, works not like a person nor like an enterprise. A country is a country, and political economics is not private economics.
Many economists, maybe except some ideological market gurus, say, and have said in a huge number of newspaper articles and books, that the current policy is absurd and terribly dangerous. Haven’t you read their papers? Do you think you have the competence to evaluate them? You are elected reasonable people, you are not the Genius of the Carpathes. Although this one was a champion of austerity measures and made Romania a debt-free country.
Do you think economists in universities are dreamers? Then why do you occasionally ask them for advice? How do you judge if you need to use the opinion of this or rather that person? Please help us understand how you opt for the guy in red or the guy in blue to help you take the right decisions.
To draw a parallel: how do you choose if you need to consider scientists who tell you about climate change caused by human activity, or those who deny it? How do you choose between evolution or creationism? A wise decision is, if you are ignorant, to see where the knowledgeable people are. We have universities, and there you will obviously find the right persons. And you will see that there are massive consensus on a huge number of things, despite the cliché that academics debate and disagree all the time. To make an analogy: linguists can disagree to some degree on how much language is a cultural or a natural thing. But virtually all linguists agree on how languages are structured, and all will say that other issues are debated. Should you wish to know more about language, please look at what linguists usually think is true and you’ll head to the right direction. Should you need to know more about nuclear power, ask prominent scholars in nuclear physics. Should you need to better understand evolution, please go and ask the Society of Biologists of your country.
I am not an economist, but I do rely on economists, those who deserve the name and have serious research records and recognition in the Academy. The Academy is, should you need to be reminded, the institution where professionals do research and have specific knowledge.
Well, I am not an economist but I am not a politician either. Maybe you politicians currently leading Europe and managing the Greek debt do know how to take wise decisions in economy without the help of trustworthy economists?
I don't know but I doubt it.
Most politicians are not economists either. Even when they lead economical and financial institutions. Catherine Lagarde's highest degree is a MPhil in Labour law from Aix University in Southern France. She is a lawyer, and certainly she’s very apt to defend the cause she likes, but how come she should take major decisions bearing impact on the whole world, taking individuals to life and to death sometimes, is not all clear in my understanding. Merkel is not either a Nobel prize in economy, nor was Thatcher, who made her policy by listening to a specific, non-consensual, theorist of market and economy. Was it easy for market lobbyists to manipulate them? To manipulate Ronald Reagan, the actor, or George W. Bush?
I don’t know and I wouldn't like to make a guess.
Well, politicians, you have your staff. The budget ministers for example. Or maybe they are not these economists you would think they are. Well, lawyer Lagarde was that too; and to keep the French example, Cahuzac, first budget minister of François Hollande, was an plastic surgeon, believe it or not, before he was convicted of massive tax fraud. A clownery with the dramatic consequences, maybe.
I am a little bit confused. Yes, I will gladly admit that politicians have to be skilled people and not necessarily economists, of course, but then who are their councilors? Who are councilors of the "Troïka"which dictates what to do to the Greek government? To whom belong the minds who meet in ‘think tanks’ and give advice to you?
I don't know; probably this can be found on the web, but it will be names without a meaning.
Sometimes, yes, the people in politics seek an advice from a well-known economist in a university. I know that. But in any case, they do take decisions themselves. And what if they do so without asking the right persons exactly what these decisions imply? They may fail to realize that the grounds for these decisions may be totally wrong.
Economists at the IMF: We know about the basic errors in Excel files that have already impacted huge costs. Prevision makers at the European Union Commission: also made big mistakes, see statements by Juncker, former head of the Eurogroup, in Athens this week: ‘It was our mistake to listen to the market gurus’. Are you seeking advice at banks or private financial institutions? It might make sense when considering how much the private sector and the deregulated market benefits from the crisis. But I can’t believe this: it would be like asking if you take your advices in China on the basis that Chinese companies own now a serious part of the Greek economy thanks to the restructuring of the country.
I don’t know, but maybe the fact that Monti and Draghi were at some point people from Goldman Sachs means something. I don’t want to imagine that there’s a plot: people sharing interests need not to make a plot in order to act together with coordination. It’s automatic. Everyone in the free market ideology promotes it without any plot needed.
You can’t be seeking advice from financial notation agencies who made such huge errors as not predicting at all the subprimes crisis, unless you are out of your mind. So yes, isn’t there ideology after all? Ideology may not always be bad, if ideology is a theory of the society. But common sense has to prevail and this is called pragmaticism, and is opposed to the deregulation as well as to the type of austerity you are forcing in Greece.
The Troïka - what a deserved name evoking immense icy landscapes - says to the Greek - and similar things can be said about Portugal - cut your costs, and sell out public property to private ‘investors’ (i.e. profit-making businessmen).
 |
| Image by Carlos Latuff |
Please explain.
Who would buy a public institution which gets privatized, for example public transport, if they don’t think they can make a benefit out of it? Of course no-one; therefore these institutions are potentially beneficiary. Then, I don’t understand why the State sells them. It’s exactly as selling your boat to people who will fish and make money while you will be spending your capital and lose longer-term income. Who would suggest to a Portuguese fisherman to sell his boat instead of fish? Which wise financial institution would insist that you sell your shop and poorly retire instead of lending to you some money to refurbish it and make a better living for the years to come?
Please explain. Maybe you will tell us that 'things are more complicated'. Are they more complicated than what economists do in research papers which only they understand? More complicated than what a Nobel prize in economy can grasp (and by the way do YOU understand such 'more complicated' things, are you the Genius of the Carpathes)? Do they ignore some of the facts? Are there undisclosed facts? Or are you, yourselves, under the domination of some other, non-democratic, superpower in the hands of financial oligarchs? Am I touching here a truth? Are you aware?
Many questions, few answers.
I am not an economist, nor is the crowd in Athens, nor is the crowd of Occupy Wall Street, nor is the people who made the long sitting in Madrid. This is the people, and the people asks you, before a revolution happens. If you don’t explain to us individuals why this economical slaughter is necessary, with real and serious arguments, one day - maybe sooner than you think -, you will need to explain it to an ulcerated crowd with little patience.
We don’t understand how making a country poor is supposed to make it wealthy.
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