Letting technocrats run Europe is bad politics and bad economics
Aditya Chakrabortty
Mon 14 Nov 2011 21.00 GMT First published on Mon 14 Nov 2011 21.00 GMT
It's a mistake to put unelected officials in charge of Italy and Greece
Consider for a moment the injured feelings of the plutocrat. He's the target of round-the-clock protests stretching from Oakland to Norwich. He's denounced by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Goodness, even those carefully-placed "news" stories about how
George Osborne must scrap his tax on the super-rich, which once commanded at least a respectful audience, now meet with the puzzled mirth of a country that suspects a wind-up. At this point the penny loafer drops: they're called the 1% because they're lonely.
But through every cold weather front a little sunshine must peep. Which is why the gym-buffed corporate financiers, the chauffeured captains of industry and all the others whose membership subs are simply too big to qualify for the 99% club must have managed a brave little smile at the past week's changes of regime in Italy and Greece. Because
that swap of Silvio with Mario, Papandreou with Papademos, shows that however much fashionable opprobrium is now being dumped on the results of free-market fundamentalism, the arguments used to justify it remain powerful.
Over the past few days, the debate over the usurpation of democratic leaders in southern Europe by unelected technocrats has run thus: general rejoicing at the deposal of Berlusconi; a little light brow-furrowing over
what this says about the eurozone's respect for the will of its people, and much use of phrases such as "safe pair of hands". The consensus has been that this is politically bad (subtext: then again, those wobbly southern European democracies do need their stabiliser wheels); but probably for the best economically.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/nov/14/technocrats-europe-bad-politics-economics
