1. There was no need for Mario Draghi’s words to understand that the crisis has already reached an irreversible threshold in Europe. A crisis of “systemic dimensions” was what Jean-Claude Trichet said a couple of months ago. Now Draghi, his successor at the European Central Bank, tells us that “the situation has worsened” (January 16th). It is difficult to understand what the worsening of a crisis of “systemic dimensions” might mean.
What is certain is that the scenarios for the coming months are quite dark, not only for those who have already been paying for the crisis for years and the medicine that aliments it – austerity or, more “soberly”, economic rigor. Even consistent sectors of capital and European ruling classes are starting to doubt that, in the gigantic process of global readjustment of the equilibrium of power underway, they risk becoming one of the losers. The specter of “decline”, even if it hasn’t stopped haunting American metropolises, has started showing up in Europe’s squares more persistently – or at least in entire European regions. And there is no lack of pundits that foresee military reasoning behind the actions of rating agencies, the first maneuvers in a “global debt war” where the goal of saving the dollar as the sovereign currency on a global level (consequently maintaining the current command centers of financial markets) can justify disintegrating the Euro. In the background, the news coming from the Strait of Hormuz reminds us that, facing a crisis of this profundity and length, war can always be an attemptable “solution” not only through finance and “sovereign” debt. » Read more «
