Happy new year 2007

Why 2007? Because the crisis started that year. Most of the world perceives its spacetime so distorted, that P.K. Dick would smile with the irony. Out of this distortion we, the soothsayers, earn our fame, our glory, and our houri virgins.

Many people think that the crisis started at September 2008 with the Lehman Bros collapse. The better informed will also grin and note that it had already started at February 2008 with another investment bank collapse, the Bear Stearns.

This belief may be reinforced by a couple of feature films, like the Big Short. In order to build the climax for its "heroes" going against the flow (fun that the heroes are upstart speculators), the film jumps forward in five minutes time, from February to September 2008. However the speculator heroes already knew since 2007 they had won their bet.

The crisis - as the realization of the bubble blown out - started within the first months of 2007. Of course, everyone pretended to look at the other side, as if this burst had been a temporary slowdown of growth. Besides, the U.S. economy had been in "growth" for 17 consecutive years, a situation unprecedented in all the history of capitalism. It took a couple of years before we fell on the ground to understand that "growth" had been only an inflation on assets' value (Minsky left us too early). But why spoiling the drama of the fall to all these gullible?


Welcome to groundhog day

My crystal ball tells me that we live 2007 again. The next phase in the crisis has already begun, but likewise most prefer to look elsewhere, not to spoil the dream. All the omens are just here, especially the urge to sell. To sell what? Whatever, houses, tablets, companies, oil, everything. Distress signals come from all the places; the most amusing of which was a couple of days ago from my neighbour who came to my home to ask my opinion about his project: He tries to persuade all the neighbours to sell their part of the courtyard (an open space of 50m x 50m) in order to have another block built there. And my neighbour has absolutely nothing to do with constructions.

During the 1929 crisis there was a saying that when you took a stock market tip even from the shoe shiner, know you are not very far from collapse. I think this story with my neighbor is indicative of the today's bubble in Germany.

The only missing confirmation is another promotion scheme from the German government, like the scrappage program of 2008 (which subsequently was reintroduced to Greece by PM Costakis in the spring of 2009). You now know it was the VW crap that they had bought.

But if I expected the German government to realize the crisis, I would be the first to be fallen aground.


Godzilla, the guardian

My guardian angel of my predictions for a decade has been the Japanese recession, which started in 1991-92 and kept to the end of 2004, a mere 25 years. Then it was paused for about 10 months (due to exports to China) and again goes on undisturbed to this day. It was no way consistent and, internally, it is full of events. Not so dramatic fiscal events as in 1991-92. People had fallen to the ground before and this time they knew what to expect. The lack of drama does not mean that things changed much though.

A crisis is seldom fiscal only. Our cult of economy faith and of our "materialistic" approach, which asks for a "financial explanation" (to be given also in illustrative charts) behind every social and political event, prevents us to see the tree itself, not only the forest for the tree.

It is a short-sighted approach, for example, that Fukushima had been a random event (of those "random events" happening regularly in nuclear reactors every ten years). So is the approach of the Arab Spring, considered only as a result of speculation by Wall Street boys.

The reason for my storytelling of all these, is to ask you to forget about every detail, like pensions cut, German exports drop and a lot of similar events (which will anyway leave their mark on the new period of the crisis) and try to see the big picture. Not because we need a 20-year forecast, but in order to avoid the collisions happening in front of our eyes.


Germany as the new epicenter of the crisis, and the capture of the North.

The title is not about some karma of justice, fulfilling the curses by radical left ANTARSYA along with Lafazanis fellows (who prepare the new guerrilla front in the left grit for victory). It is simply the well-known rule that whoever falls from higher stand, makes the biggest crash.

It is no different an atmosphere here in Germany now, as it was in the U.S. on 2007, and the same one as in Greece on 2008. Everyone felt that the party is near its end, and looked in despair for something to blame. For example, in Athens of the December 2008 riots, it was a diffused hysteric emotion that Christmas sells plunged because of those damned youngsters refusing to set down with their brand new Playstation we bought for them. (The market collapse, if you remember, "would not touch the country").

The diffused emotion of that December of 2008 was that the kids have their own point, as long as they don't set our cars ablaze.

The same diffused emotion circulates now at the North, but instead of our own kids, it is the emigrants (which makes it a lot easier).


The great Merkel dribble.

As the time goes by I become more confident about the motives of A. Merkel, which are to open the German borders. From the beginning I rejected that there were economic motives, because the idea that Germany will need cheap labour amidst the crisis is dubious. Of course the Industrial and Employers' Confederation might see them as a chance out of this crisis - not to take it would be unfair; but it has been almost proven that the Western Elites rarely have an outlook beyond six months (at best) so within this interval had I to look for her motives.

In our last IRC I had a discourse that Merkel sought a way to change the image of a nasty dictatorial Germany oppressing Europe. There has been some time while she attempted to put forward some other EU players for the role of the bad guy in Germany's stead; but everyone already presumes Slovaks and Lithuanians as Germany's adherents, so the deception that all the blame should account for the harsh Finnish, does not apply.

With all those hundreds of thousands emigrants outside its borders, Germany could easily grasp the Hungarian way, blocking them with fences and machine guns. But this would give more momentum to the idea that Germany is the great oppressor, an idea she cannot tolerate politically or even in her mind.

The stigma of 1945 is the official narrative of the Western world, and Nazi regime is used as the yardstick over all the "Darth Vaders" afterwards, so the way of the guns was out of the question.

By the opening of the borders Merkel pragmatically bestowed the role of the morally bad to everyone else, while she assumed the role of the morally good for Germany (and herself).

All these had a huge impact domestically on her political career, while suffering a de facto abolishment of the Schengen Treaty. The first is impressive (as Merkel never decided against a common mood of the German people), but the second is not at all. Since the beginning of the crisis, Germany has shown an extreme (suicidal I'd say) indifference to the structure that provided its power.

Today, six months later, the whole North Europe feels hysteria. We are not talking about already known cases between Hungarians, Polish, Estonian SS and the rest. Even the caring Scandinavians, the so-called multi-cultural Dutch, the freedom fighters French, even the Swiss have come to an anti-emigrant frenziness. Overall those it is the Germans who got the upper hand, politically and morally. Merkel has the capacity to dictate a temporary residence in Germany for the emigrants, without anyone claiming her a racist, because Danes and Swiss already seize their valuables, Sweden imposes identity control to allow in, while they are ready to oust 1/3 of those already in the country, and so on.

The plan to build a fence at the macedonian border and the emigrants will remain in Greece is ridiculously pointless. Greece, in case you did not notice, becomes - according to the vision - the emigrants' dump (I mean, "hot spot"). Especially in the coming springtime, the flows of people from Syria are going to be friendlier with the bedeviled jihadism.

Diplomatic talks between European Commission and Erdogan are representative. Not because "the sultan" has flipped out, as they say. We know this for long now. It is because of the comedy of the Europeans' stance towards him. Like a prince you are praised, says Jean-Claude, three billion euros you are granted, and still nothing for our sake. This is the comedic way European Elites make sense of this world.


Mirror, Mirror on the wall...

Besides that the emigrants issue remains the cause of Europe's hysteria, it is only a mirror of the crisis and the collapse we are experiencing. The story of white asses handed on by black emigrants this New Year's Day in Cologne (and in Finland, as I hear) tell much more about the social situation than for the non-story itself.

It is alike the Greek December of 2008 that tells more about the collapse of the "Greek dream" itself than about the kids setting the Avramopoulos-style Christmas tree on fire in Athens. The hysteria of those well-off fed in the eurosystem comes not because of some ancestor glory or racial sense of superiority, but because they are expressing this collapse itself. As in Greece, the expression is totally upset and disoriented.

Under these circumstances, most political discussions are pointless, especially in the way the sides are now shaped. The left that Michea is accusing is indifferent because there are no answers to the questions discussed, not because of Michea's accusations. For example: Yes or no to Brexit?


Into the boats, sisters, upto the mountains...

In this regime of collapse, the defenses each one of us possess may be limited. It is the same for the communal defenses, as there is no common fantasy (yet?) to unite us under something. Hence the communities are reformed into small groups of common ideas. The villages' madmen in a sense. Their moves are erratic and nobody can predict their success.

Those madmen may take Dutch Mountains together and occupy one of the emptiest towns of macedonia and start a direct democracy.

Or they may build and enter a container to meet me in Montevideo or Tuscany mountains.

Or they may marry a Cuban to live in Cuba (sorry Viper, it's the only way)

Or, or, anything I cannot say. What I can say to you for sure is, stay away from the collapse (not only geographically) as far as possible, and it is probably not going to devour you.

I also know that probably nothing of all these happens, and everything go on "normally"; it is nevertheless difficult to run fast on high heels, your education is preventive also, you may also have a child to grow up, it is a shame to become the madmen, or even won't touch you because you are the computer geek, or your mother is gonna die of her agony. A lot of "explanations" to reason for.

The same reasoning was employed as well in 2007, claiming it impossible for the system to collapse, because it is backed up by the best minds, the richest and the most powerful people.