Regarding the mood for reforms, older persons (for example the parents of [the minister]) could give further data points on that. The ... mood for reforms didn't begin now.

[...]

...the second wave of the mood for reforms ... now this one was an economic reform that could truly be felt ..., it's special significance lies in the fact that from this time on ... the populace hated reforms more fervently than anything else. The true nature of the mood for reforms could best be captured in the circumstance that the population hates already the word "reforms", as [a former PM] acutely observed. ...in the public mind, the misconception that reform = inflation took root. The subsequent giant waves of the mood for reforms also brought inflation, ever greater ones, thus it is not easy to explain to the populace that reforms are basically blissful things, for the populace only sees as far as the counter of the butcher, not further. Cato already had to face this problem, two thousand years ago: "Yes, citizens, it is difficult to speak to the stomach, because it lacks ears", he chided the people of Rome, but the people, as we see, still don't learn.

Nothing came of this reform either ... again ten years' pause came.

...the mood for reforms again gathered strength, then already under the patronage of the IMF and the World Bank. It was then that the populace realised that economic reform is not a single act, but is cyclical in nature, like flu, and its complications are ever uglier. At any rate, the ... third wave not only brought inflation, but something else: "it went along the redistribution of capital ownership licenses (...) to the extent that groups of leaders began to treat formally state-owned ... capital goods as private capital"...

...then came the [austerity reform] Package, which solved the top-most important things to solve, and left the rest untouched. The populace experienced the fourth paroxysm of the mood for reforms again mostly as a worsening of conditions of living, from here comes the enthusiasm with which they laid their hopes in the fifth wave.

Now comes the final and sweeping-everything-aside reform tsunami, something the world has never seen before... Everything will be very nice, everything will be very good, we'll be satisfied with everything, and when the leaves fall, it will be even better.

...We are certain that the present outbreak of the mood for reforms will again solve the topmost important things, just like the Package did ten years ago, or not exactly the same way, because we now have more things to solve, and the situation is somewhat more complex. Later, of course, the rest will be solved, too, independently of the alleged fact that in the special commissions (these are the secret and unapproachable sanctuaries of the mood for reform), one can already sense moves ... in the direction that if the package of measures will be unpopular anyway, then at least it shouldn't have long-term benefit either.

It could even be that in two years' time, the mood for reforms will subside in such a way that everything stays the same.

The sixth bubbling-over of the mood for reforms is due around 2018, the seventh and also last around 2030. There won't be any more, as on 13 April 2036, the asteroid named Apophis arrrives, and will wrap up everything once and for all.

This sarcastic op-ed appeared on the front page of Hungarian literature-and-public-life weekly Élet ÉS Irodalom [=Life AND Literature], from the pen of a pundit named István Váncsa. I think it is significant because:

• This is a liberal paper: though pluralist, it is very much sympathetic to the Bliarite and neoliberal elites('s views). A few weeks ago, they published a big call for 'reforms' from the pen of four prominent economists who were former ministers or in similar top jobs, this week they carry one further there-is-no-alternative piece, and a depressing appraisal of Tom "Flat-Earth" Friedman as a role model of an 'independent' pundit (but also a critical piece by my favourite hard-left philosopher).
• The pundit is not a usual suspect from the marginalised Left, but one from the Central European tradition of quibbling pundits. The latter write from the position of 'the little man', priding themselves to be ideology-free and critical of all power (while in truth often falling for a lot of spin, and attacking weak activists of this or that cause). That this guy noticed something is wrong with all the reform-talk is something.
• Finally: this is supposed to be 'reforms'-loving NuYurp.