Timo Soini: Why I Won’t Support More Bailouts

• Timo Soini: Why I Won’t Support More Bailouts

The above-linked article is an op-ed penned by the leader of the ‘True Finns’ party who have just made a sensational, establishment-confounding electoral breakthrough up there, in the Land of the Midnight Sun.

It has neatly encapsulated many views which will strike a certain chord here and which – it must be said – are belatedly starting to gain traction across Europe. Indeed, last weekend’s ‘scare story’ about an imminent Greek exit from the Euro has been attributed by some to a piece of black propaganda on the part of the Finance Ministry to warn Chancellor Merkel of the consequences of listening to the increasingly vocal coterie among her advisors (typified by Peter Bofinger) who think that Greek debt should be marked down to some repayable residuum and the ramification for its foolhardy owners then dealt with locally (if not, perhaps, as stringently as Mr. Soini rightly suggests). For another demonstration of belated lucidity, see Professor Morgan Kelly’s powerful argument in the Irish Times.

While I have no personal knowledge of Soini, nor the details of his platform, I do note that he is already being castigated as ‘right wing’ and blamed for stirring up ’racial tensions’. It may even be true – though I am also well aware that when new parties spring up out of the fertile soil of mass discontent (which all too infrequently arises with the incestuous self-serving and general uselessness of the established political horse-traders), they are always called ‘right wing’ and ‘racist’, whatever their true stamp.

In the eyes of the mainstream apparatus – whose cushy lifestyle of political privilege, greasy pole-climbing, and influence-peddling you threaten by your recalcitrance – if you do not believe in the dubious merits of welfare-subsidized, mass immigration (as opposed to a free, but unsupported entry to those individuals purporting to be privately productive) and if you recoil from a disavowal of your particular region’s long-held traditions and values in favour of some imposed, ‘right on’, internationalist, left-liberal list of do’s and don’ts – i.e., you are benignly patriotic as opposed to national chauvinist – or if you dare to think that government is best which is least and which works from the roots up and is not a vast Utopian engineering project working from the increasingly remote imperial centre down – you are, of course, deemed to be demanding the return of the Fuehrer!

With that said, I suggest that, whatever Mr. Soini’s personal merits or demerits,  the argument below is replete both with good sense and a clear exposition of the real issues at stake and that it is only ‘dangerous‘  because most people would recognise it as such, to the great detriment of that vast, parasitical self-interest which battens upon their blood and sweat and habitually roosts in the likes of Westminster, Washington and Brussels.

Timo Soini, Wall Street Journal, MAY 9, 2011

When I had the honor of leading the True Finn Party to electoral victory in April, we made a solemn promise to oppose the so-called bailouts of euro-zone member states. These bailouts are patently bad for Europe, bad for Finland and bad for the countries that have been forced to accept them. Europe is suffering from the economic gangrene of insolvency—both public and private. And unless we amputate that which cannot be saved, we risk poisoning the whole body.

The official wisdom is that Greece, Ireland and Portugal have been hit by a liquidity crisis, so they needed a momentary infusion of capital, after which everything would return to normal. But this official version is a lie, one that takes the ordinary people of Europe for idiots. They deserve better from politics and their leaders.

To understand the real nature and purpose of the bailouts, we first have to understand who really benefits from them. Let’s follow the money.

At the risk of being accused of populism, we’ll begin with the obvious: It is not the little guy that benefits. He is being milked and lied to in order to keep the insolvent system running. He is paid less and taxed more to provide the money needed to keep this Ponzi scheme going. Meanwhile, a kind of deadly symbiosis has developed between politicians and banks: Our political leaders borrow ever more money to pay off the banks, which return the favor by lending ever-more money back to our governments, keeping the scheme afloat.

In a true market economy, bad choices get penalized. Not here. When the inevitable failure of overindebted euro-zone countries came to light, a secret pact was made.

Continue reading at WSJ Online.