YOUR MONEY

The Sword of Damocles -- times 2

The EU continues to spiral into dangerous territory. 

Spain and Greece officially have some 25% unemployment.  Greece is still trying to ‘cut back on spending’ to meet more bailout requirements and now Cyprus is revealed to be in the same boat – supposedly as its bank became insolvent after lending heavily to Greece.  Remember that euphemism -  ‘the haircut’,  which the EU imposed on lenders to Greece, so that they only got back some 25 cents on the dollar (calculated in U.S. and Canadian terms.)!

So Cyprus may have a valid point – in part.

Hungary and other eastern European states are also rumored to be needing bailouts and Germany has only so much money and cannot save the entire EU even if it wanted to -- and it doesn’t!

Meanwhile, nationalistic fascist or neo-Nazi parties are gaining support across Europe: Jobbik in Hungary and Golden Dawn in Greece and there are many other such groups rising in popularity in 12 of Europe’s countries (as outlined by Wikipedia under neo-Nazi parties).

So, the toxic mix of high unemployment, rising taxes (or the collection of taxes that were long avoided), fear and anger, and looking for scapegoats other that one’s own spendthrift socialist governments – is creating stresses that echo those of the Depression years of the 1930s -- which  led to the rise of Mussolini and Hitler.

Will history repeat itself in Europe?   

I don’t know, but prolonged ‘austerity’ mixed with high unemployment are surely the ‘kindling’ for such a bonfire of hate, racism, war and genocide.