Since 2008 GDP in real terms of the European economy , EU 15, has fallen by 2.5%. For three “miserable” points out of a total of 100 that we had, we are sunk in a serious economic crisis that is accompanied by a great social and political crisis. which is really relevant. It occurs to anyone that we must have lost a lot more with the one that is falling on us.
I am afraid that to this extent, the illusion lost and the mistrust gained by the actions of our leaders who sell a minute of glory and plunge us deeper and deeper into unrest are not accounted for. I refer to the last summit in Brussels in which, after multiple attempts, and in a sovereign exercise of looking the other way, they presented us with an agreement on the guidelines for a new Europe, when we are all crying for the lost European dream and for the that is coming upon us in terms of cuts in benefits and social rights.
Of course, we have not added either, the lack of solidarity and empathy because if these variables were in the GDP equation, having lost 3 points would only mean a little less for everyone and so happy, and not the catastrophe of the unemployed, of young people who find or expect a job, bloody evictions of families, hidden cuts in education and health, limitations in public services,… At the first change, we have forgotten the role we had given to the public sector as guarantor of rights and clear exponent of our European welfare society of which we were so proud, to go on to demand accounts for its debt and its deficit, forgetting that these are, for the most part, the result of its balancing and stabilizing work.
They are most certainly not incorporated, the false expectations created by the real estate and financial bubble in which we have been floating for years, feeding the vain illusion of wealth and spending well beyond our real possibilities. Suddenly, we have realized that the deficit that we have accumulated (fundamentally the private sector), mortgages us in an unbearable way for the next few years. And the most desperate thing is that while the EREs and bankruptcies of companies and families continue, those who profited the most by giving the credits and feeding the bubbles, exercise, in collusion with the public powers, their great share of power, and demand with great multimillion-dollar bailouts that guarantee their benefits and perks and add up, and add up again to the crisis that we have upon us. It’s been almost four years since the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and we still see how the most daring policies at the European level are aimed at saving the embarrassment of the European financial system: granting loans for 489 billion euros at an interest rate of 1% that it will serve to temporarily clean up the accounts of the banking sector and that not even in the best of dreams will they reach the companies and families drowned by the lack of credit and, without a doubt, are the ones that really need it.
Of course, we also do not include the damage that we all know we are causing to our planet and that we shamelessly despise. Environmental damage is the closest thing to a “Ponzi pyramid scheme” or if you want to another bubble that we will realize when it explodes and we have to bear the damage caused. Does global warming and the international circus sound like nothing to you?
The crisis that we have is not explained only by the drop in production levels. It is a global crisis of values in which we are losing our way as a society. Personally, I don’t have miraculous recipes, but I am convinced that the solution is not to put all our effort into controlling the public deficit. We need to invent new paths and try new instruments, the ones we have already know where they take us…