While eurozone leaders grapple with the clear refusal of Greece's new left-wing government to honor the debt deals made by its predecessor, a new threat is emerging to the single currency and indeed ultimately the unity of Europe. Tens of thousands of Spaniards crowded out the center of Madrid Sunday to protest the austerity that has been imposed on their country as the price of its own bailout by fellow eurozone countries.
The movement that has brought together such a potent protest calls itself Podemos, which means “We can”. Taking the slogan that won Barack Obama the White House is the more powerful for the presence of the “demos”, the Greek word which links the Spanish movement to Greece's Syriza. Podemos did well in last May's European elections and is expected to show strongly in the general election that must be held before the end of this year. Both it and Syriza share similar support. Neither party could have prospered with the usual far-left suspects and drawing room liberals. Each has been impelled by a groundswell of middle class voters, fed up at shrinking incomes and rising prices. In both countries there is also popular disgust at the growing gap between the super-rich and everyone else. It is far more than the astonishing statistic that top executives are earning more in single hour than the average worker will earn in a whole year. In both Spain and Greece there is a clear perception that while everyone else has been suffering, the mega-wealthy have actually been prospering. Using their substantial political influence, they are ensuring that tax legislation leaves them untouched or has sufficient loopholes. Such legislative gaps allow the minority of the super-rich to pay an infinitely smaller proportion of their income in tax than ordinary citizens. The resentment is the greater for the fact that the financial mess for which so many innocents are having the pay dearly, was caused by greedy bankers and businessmen speculating wildly in the hope of making themselves even richer. Despite all the sonorous talk of the markets being essential for the efficient allocation of capital, people cannot understand how trillion dollar webs of complex derivatives often based on artificial assets, in which no real good was actually involved, were and are, astonishingly, once again supposed contributing to the efficient use of capital. The conviction is growing that the international markets are a casino for an exclusive number of players, all of whom are gambling recklessly, not with their own, but with other people's money. Therefore, although the neatly-suited financial guardians of the eurozone are talking rules and and legal obligations to the new left-wing Greek government and maybe, before the year is out, to its mirror government in Spain, they are missing the point. The vicious financial and fiscal fix of austerity has served to underline the vast and growing disparity in wealth. This produces fury among voters, who back socialists dedicated to wealth redistribution. Unfortunately lurking dangerously in the shadows are the neo-Nazis of the likes of France's National Front with the seductive argument that it is immigrants who are the real reason falling living standards. The real crime of the ruling fat cats, says these fascists, is to have permitted immigration to grow. Such corrosive lies seek to misdirect popular anger from the real economic criminals.
