In two sentences @Klaus articulates a cogent critique of the Neo-Liberal Delusion that has thoroughly colonized the EU, and it’s Masters Merkel/Schäuble the imperative of this motley duo is to willfully forget their own history, and then endlessly propagandize about their political/economic virtue!
Please recall the propaganda offensive of the Virtuous Northern Tier v. The Profligate Southern Tier? The editors at the FT, and many of it’s readers find this Merkel/Schäuble Party Line politically useful, if not an irresistible antidote to the utter failure of their singular idea of The Self-Correcting Free Market:now in it’s seventh year of ‘recovery’. One might ask if this be ‘recovery’ what might prosperity look like? The rise of Thatcher/Reagan and their addiction to the economic bromides of political romantics like the risible Hayek and the other Philosophers of Greed like von Mises and Friedman, with help from script writer and pamphleteer Ayn Rand have still not lost the most diehard of their acolytes and political pitchmen: reconsideration and even a volte face of those true believers is not in the cards. Yet we await the next political actor who will appear on the EU stage, Spain, and who is to follow?
You don’t mention Keynes, yet your whole essay is an attempt not just to discredit but to malign his policies : he is the perennial enemy of the Neo-Liberal Apologist, for good reason! Neo-Liberals refuse to face the failure of their Economic Theology and it’s successor Austerity: it would require an act of impiety, not to speak of sacrilege.
StephenKMackSD