Pantomime Republics

More to the point, the salvation that Europe promised 26 years ago increasingly resembles a charade. As the Yale historian Timothy Snyder has noted, Spain and its kin in Southern Europe have effectively become “pantomime republics”: elected national officials defer to the unelected supranational European Union. In policy terms, this means subscribing to the pro-austerity agenda emanating from Germany. Last September, a majority in the Spanish Parliament amended the Constitution to include a deficit reduction clause; it was the first time the document had been touched since it was written in 1978.

The New York Times (Link.)

I know I have been kind of hammering away at this a bit, but this free-money-for-robber-baron-bankers, austerity-for-all, politics-of-pain, and sacrificing-on-the-altars-of-markets-and-confidence-fairies stuff is maddening. Long-standing, robust systems are being looted in broad daylight.