09 November 2011

The gnomes of Brussels

Ah yes, there is a secret cabal in charge.  The Guardian reports:
 Here's how things work. The real decisions in Europe are now taken by the Frankfurt Group, an unelected cabal made of up eight people: Lagarde; Merkel; Sarkozy; Mario Draghi, the new president of the ECB; José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission; Jean-Claude Juncker, chairman of the Eurogroup; Herman van Rompuy, the president of the European Council; and Olli Rehn, Europe's economic and monetary affairs commissioner.
This group, which is accountable to no one, calls the shots in Europe. The cabal decides whether Greece should be allowed to hold a referendum and if and when Athens should get the next tranche of its bailout cash. What matters to this group is what the financial markets think not what voters might want. To the extent that governments had any power, it has been removed and placed in the hands of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF.

This would more worrying, were it not for the fact of the Group's manifest incompetence.  At every stage in the euro crisis they have been reacting to events, mostly unsuccessfully.  Last week's G20 (and the preceding EU summit) simply confirmed that the Group bungle everything they touch.



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Inept, naive and out of touch, the Brussels Gnomes will be amazed and stunned when the people grown tired of eating their imaginary cake burn them out of their ivory towers like the French peasantry did to another gang of elitists some 200 years ago.