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Ah, those good old Cold War/Soviet Union days when an army of Kremlinologists was hooked on every imperceptible move by an inscrutable politburo.

Wait a minute. Who would have thought that two decades after the end of "real socialism" politburos would be back in fashion?

China does it - see their nine-member standing committee, the holy of the holies inside their 25-member politburo. And proving once more Slavoj Zizek's thesis that the marriage of capitalism and democracy is over, "free" Europe also does it - with relish, even doubling down on China's notorious Gang of Four.

Meet the Gang of Eight
The eurozone is now in fact run by an eight-member politburo.

 
What a sterling job. This Gang of Eight is accountable to no one, except mythical Zeus with his trademark thunderbolts. In the liquid modernity era, Zeus goes by the name of the God of the Market. The only thing that matters to the Gang of Eight is what financial markets - run by the God - want; mere mortals, as in European voters, are at best a nuisance.

Ergo, eurozone national governments are totally meaningless. The shots are called by a troika formed by the European Central Bank (ECB), the European Commission (EC) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). All of them gloriously unelected.

Europe's politburo goes by the innocent acronym GdF, French for Groupe de Francfort (Frankfurt Group), established last month. They met no less than four times during the recent, spectacularly failed Group of 20 debt festival in Cannes.

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As for the necessary firewall that would "save" Italy from its debt - over 1.9 trillion euros (US$2.6 trillion) - it is a humongous 1 trillion euros. It won't happen - first of all because the Almighty Emperor Hu (Jintao) has snubbed this latest invention by the Western barbarians. Emperor Hu certainly knew avant la lettre the Orwellian-style European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) would be revealed as a monumental scam, as the EFSF bought hundreds of millions of euros of its own bonds. You don't need to be Nouriel Roubini to bet the euro may be on the way of breaking down.

"Merkozy" - responsible for 48% of the eurozone's gross domestic product - and the Gang of Eight are now first-class practitioners of neo-colonial power. What the Gang of Eight is truly after is essentially a rich man's EU, as breached in a near-apocalyptic Reuters story. [1] Get ready because from now on, the euro won't unify Europe; it will spearhead its balkanization.

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The German government believes Britain should be part of a Europe-wide tax on financial transactions, the proceeds of which could help prop up the single currency.
However, David Cameron and George Osborne have blocked the tax, with the Chancellor claiming it is a “bullet aimed at the heart of London”. Ministers have instead called on the Germans to allow the European Central Bank (ECB) effectively to print money to rescue beleaguered economies. The Prime Minister will travel to Berlin on Friday for what are expected to be tense negotiations with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, over the crisis. A senior figure in the party headed by Mrs Merkel attacked Britain as relations between the two countries deteriorated in the wake of the single currency crisis.
“I can understand that the British don’t want that [the financial transaction tax] when they generate almost 30 per cent of their gross domestic product from financial-market business in the City of London,” said Volker Kauder, the parliamentary leader of the Christian Democratic Union, said in a speech to the party congress in Leipzig.

“But Britain also carries responsibility for making Europe a success. Only being after their own benefit and refusing to contribute is not the message we’re letting the British get away with.”

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: SpanishMatMaster

FirstQuaker, I have you on "hiding" but for God's sake, if you are going to write German, spell it right.

Excuse me, but in all fairness... if we took the same attitude toward your mutilated English, where would we be?

K.