Wednesday 30 May 2012

pyrrhic victory or yes, we have no bleeding turnips

“Another such victory and I am undone.”

The ethos of the battlefield has, for the most part, been relegated to the invisible and agnostic sphere of finance, which has created an aversion to bloodshed and protracted war-making, since that is not a good climate for business—most business, likely there’s a calculus for acceptable loss and trigger for cutting-off the profits for the infernal machines, but it also tends to overshadow the “retrograde” and black market skirmishes that still go on and the people who take part in these sorties and surprises. The majority of what passes as an economic victory (although industry innovation and what’s now called a come-back or revival, like with Ireland or Iceland and what will happen for the Greek people, is not being entertained with this category of robber-baron success) is little cause for celebration (DE/EN), priced in terms of bankruptcy for the competition, the bleeding dry of stake-holders (shareholders and debtors), loss of jobs and living-standards, and trend-setting easily overturned that’s mere redistribution among the oligarchs. What are deemed key institutions are even sustained after being vanquished at the expense of public treasure. Those who would like to see struggling members of the European currency union quickly dispatched and dismissed unwillingly, rather than risk a sort of economic cold war, are rushing away from triumph. The EU’s proponents and founders could not have anticipated the spread of the economic collapse and that such a crisis would force a sober discussion of policy (how taxation and budgets are drafted) integration and is not using the plight of some members to justify the hegemony of others—rather this experiment in amalgamation, an imperfect union, shows how diminished the whole would be without its constituent parts and that the abridgement of differences is no basis for abandonment or ejection. Though the belligerents of politics and finance are intertwined, there’s principle enough, I hope, within the governments (at the behest of the people and not business or self-interest alone) to make the right decisions and have cause to celebrate.