Links. Future of Europe edition. Contains surprising employment graph. And: Jeremiah about how to frame QE?

1) Today, there are elections in Greece. Not entirely surprisingly (read this about rapidly increasing malnutrition and rapidly decreasing rates of vaccination among young children), an Syriza, a new party, is popular. I’ve read an english summary of the program. It’s a radical party, as it wants a fundamental overhaul of Greek politics (which includes banks). But it is not a radical left party as it, except for debt relieve, does not aim at a radical change in property relations (wanting to decrease malnutrition and to improve public health does not strike me as ‘radical left’). They have in fact things in common with the USA Tea Party. The truth is of course that the neoliberal Troika ‘roll back the government, including succesful government production of health, education and tax funded pensions’ agenda was extremely radical.

2) Robin Fransman argues for forward guidance of moderate wage increases and a revised ‘Stability and Growth pact’ (as the present pact is a deflation machine)

3) Quite some (old?) German and Dutch pundits are lamenting ECB QE. ‘Jeremiads‘ seems to be the apt phrase (see below). There seems to be a clear sense of defeat: this is not what we intended. Remarkably, USA conservatives like Milton Friedman or Martin Fieldstein were/are totally at ease with the kind of QE pursued by the ECB. Update: mind that in many neoclassical macro models government production has zero value!

4) Remarkably, the ‘core countries’ which were against QE are not doing that well, at the moment, when it comes to job growth (graph, source: Eurostat).Growth is remarkably high in many countries, I’ll look into the demand side of it (Portugal knows at this moment for instance double digit growth in the tourism sector).

Note: Turkey and Romania are omitted because of a break in the time series, Croatia is omitted because of a mayor inconsistency between unemployment and employment data, all countries with less than 1 million inhabitants are left out, Norway is omitted because of oil and I do not trust the Hungarian data, for some reason. Aside: this is about total employment, when we look at the 16-64 age bracket Finland and the Netherlands are doing quite a bit worse. The differences between neighbours Latvia and Lithuania is confusing.

5) QE is not about betraying old rich men, austerity is about betraying the young. Here, some horrifying data on average wages by age group in Spain, Greece, France. Arghhh…. , the old in the Netherlands try to teach the young that they have to bother about are their pensions, not their present wages. Fortunately, the young are… young.

6) Dear German and Dutch QE pundits, this is what you should have written (Jeremiah quote):

“How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! How is she become as a widow! She that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary!
She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies.
Judah is gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great servitude: she dwelleth among the heathen, she findeth no rest: all her persecutors overtook her between the straits.
The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn feasts: all her gates are desolate: her priests sigh, her virgins are afflicted, and she is in bitterness”