It's just not fair (a Ben Hur tale)

Homo economicus20/12/2010

Homo economicus: It's just not fair. We have been at sea for two years and have faced almighty storms and attacks from raiding speculator vessels. We have spread the pain on board by flogging the slaves who do the rowing. Just as the other ships draw close we flog them harder and harder indicating that the beats of the hammer will be front loaded in velocity up to the limits of debt slave endurance (on board we like to say that things are manageable). All the time we enchant pari passu pari passu - we are all in this together depositors and bondholders. We would never harm a bondholder in a 1,000 years unless our overlords told us to. And what do our overlords in the markets say? We don't trust you and we don't think that you can bring the ship in.

It's just rotten - having rowed, flogged and done everything to appease the market overlords they treat us with contempt never dropping below 8 beats per minute as shown by these bond spreads. The curve rises every time we inflict more austerity flogging. Data here. What more do you want us to do? We can cut wages even more and stop buying your exports to us? We can export our most talented and best educated? We can offer you smart golf courses in place of ghost estates?

I'll tell you what we will do - we will send more ships and more debt slaves to shock the market further. Instead of a €15bn adjustment, lets go for €30bn. Shock them I say. And we can:
Fire 30,000 public servants
Cut public sector wages to align with those in Singapore
Simply abolish the minimum wage
Contract out hospitals and provide private health insurance to everyone
Raise class size to 40
Sell of the state silver - especially the profitable bits

Reduce welfare to the levels prevailing in the wastelands of inner city Britain - that will incentivise them.

Bet you that is what you are thinking right now o godly markets. And we will never default, never default, pari passu, we will do whatever you order.

(Slí Eile)

Posted in: Inequality

Tagged with: austerity


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