Austerity Killing You? How About a Trade Deal?

[adirondacker]

Europe is right on the edge of another downward lurch into prolonged deflation. GDP growth is hovering right around zero. Germany, as an export powerhouse, continues to thrive, but at the expense of the rest of the continent -- victims of German-imposed budget austerity demands. The euro, which keeps sinking against the U.S. dollar, is now trading at just $1.20, its lowest level in four and a half years.

Unemployment outside prosperous Germany remains stuck at over 12 percent. All of this weakens the political center that supports the EU, and increases the appeal of far-right parties. (You wonder if Europe's leaders bother to read their own history. When there is protracted depression and desperate people, nasty things have been known to happen in this part of the world.)

<snip>
So what does Europe have left? It is a mark of the delusion of Europe's leaders that the EU is putting its chips on a trade deal with the U.S. -- the so-called Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. TTIP is not really a trade deal at all but a series of measures intended to promote further deregulation of economic, financial, health, labor, safety, privacy, and environmental protections on both sides of the Atlantic. TTIP was designed by corporations to weaken labor and government -- and would do just about nothing to get Europe out of its austerity trap.

Tariffs and other formal trade barriers between the U.S. and the EU are already vanishingly low. The story that differences in national regulatory policy somehow hamper trade (and hence growth) is bogus. Back when workers in both regions were paid decent wages and bankers did not play roulette with the economy, regulations were no obstacle to booming trade."
<SNIP>

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/austerity-killing-you-how_b_6414534.html

This is getting fucking ridiculous.

[KoKo]

1. K&R!