Time to be agressively irresponsible

If  I owe 100 thousands to the bank, I am in trouble. If I owe 100 billions, the bank is in trouble.

First, this is not a moral tale, no matter what German rethoric would have us believe. Both the lenders and borrowers have been irresponsible, yet the burden is all put on the latter, with the former expecting a profit. Portugal is not being bailed out. Portugal is being forced to bail out German banks.

But what can we do, our leaders say? We have no choice but to submit!

What we can do is use our weakness as a strength. Put the gun to our own heads. Demand actual help from the ECB, or else... or else we will default, and start a process that brings down first Spain, then the whole EU (and the country that matters, Germany), right along with us. We need and we can hold the EU hostage. What we need is to elect a political force from outside of the usual circle of "responsible" parties; someone that can be "credibly irresponsible". That is why I am voting for the communists in the coming election. Not because I am a communist, but because we need someone that scares the shit out of Merkel and Trichet.

Why are we, instead of using the cards we have, begging for IMF loans at the price of our independence and our future, to ensure smooth sailing for German banks? There are only three possible answers: either our politicians are ignorant of our strenght, or too cowardly to use it, or...their interests are simply not aligned with our own.

All three are probably true in some measure, but the last one is the most important: the austerity measures, the destruction of the social state, are not their concessions to the necessity of the crisis. Rather, the crisis is the excuse to replace the social state by the society they want: not "free market", which they mock, but rather a guilded age of crony capitalism, with monopolists in charge of the market and an incestuous poltical class that ignores us all as rabble. Sadly, we are back to the fights of 100 years ago. Happily, just like 100 years ago, we do not have to stay defeated.

It is time to be agressively irresponsible.