Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

Is not all the talk of jobs coming out of the sub-committee or the EU Summit yesterday a bit preposterous when at the same time the key element of policy is to continue suffocating the economy with the debt of zombie banks and imposing crippling austerity? Is it not a little bit like saying we have a magical formula to cure a sick man while we are holding a pillow over his face and draining him of his blood? Is this not the reality of all the talk about jobs, namely, that it directly conflicts with the main thrust of policy coming from the EU authorities, which is being implemented by the Government? It simply cannot create jobs, at least at a faster rate than it is losing them, if it is imposing austerity and all the funds that should go into investment are going into zombie banks.

I was in Berlin on Thursday with the finance committee of the German Bundestag. I asked them this question: how do they seriously propose to deal with the collapse of investment in Europe, given the austerity? They said the main point was to increase competitiveness so we would get investment from China and India. If that is the strategy, we are really banjaxed because, of course, the problem is there can be no serious investment, and there is very little investment coming from China and India, because they can see that the European economy is contracting under the weight of the austerity. Although this is precisely the market that would buoy up possible investment, it is contracting.

This is even the case with the German economy, which is the other piece of news people need to know. The German economy itself is contracting and has no money. The only reason we are even debating with the Germans about borrowing and bonds is that they can borrow money cheaper, but they do not actually have any money. Their economy is contracting too, just like our economy and the whole European economy, because it is being suffocated by the banking debt burden and by austerity.

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