"Or, as Mig has put it more concisely: 'Economics is about bullshit mathematical arguments to support one's ideological policy choices.' "

  Very well.  Then this point must be hammered home again and again and, most of all, where it counts: among the "Jesuits", i.e. the annointed up-and-coming class trained in the Seminaries known as graduate schools of business administration.

   Another, related, but no less important point (for another thread on another day) is that, with the election of Barack Obama, we have one of probably many examples to come of the "pay-off" for literally decades of patient and determined econo-political indoctrination of the public.  Obama is the flesh-and-blood culmination of dragging the accepted political spectrum so far to the "Right" that he is thought of as the embodiment of a Leftist.  Again, that's is almost the whole ballgame before the first pitch is thrown.  It's important to bear in mind that this sea-change didn't come about by magic.  It's the result of enormous and determined long labors.  And, against it, the supposed representatives and care-takers of the opposed views have done essentially nothing at all.  No one should be surprised, then, if the landscape of econo-political opinion offers practically nothing in a publicly-understood alternative to the socially destructive neo-liberal approach.

  But the simple fact is that nowhere is the point (mentioned above) being hammered home--not among the graduate schools' MBA candidates and not among any notable general public.

  As Serge Halimi points out in an front-page article in the current issue of Le Monde Diplomatique,

 

    "Economique mais aussi démocratique, la crise européenne soulève quatre questions principales. Pourquoi des politiques dont la banqueroute est assurée sont-elles néanmoins déployées dans trois pays (Irlande, Portugal, Grèce) avec une férocité remarquée ? Les architectes de ces choix sont-ils des illuminés pour que chaque échec -- prévisible -- de leur médication les conduise à en décupler la dose ? Dans des systèmes démocratiques, comment expliquer que les peuples victimes de telles ordonnances semblent n'avoir d'autre recours que de remplacer un gouvernement qui a failli par un autre idéologiquement jumeau et déterminé à pratiquer la même « thérapie de choc » ?
  Enfin, est-il possible de faire autrement ?

     "La réponse aux deux premières questions s'impose sitôt qu'on s'affranchit du verbiage publicitaire sur l'« intérêt général », les « valeurs partagées de l'Europe », le « vivre ensemble ». Loin d'être folles, les politiques mises en oeuvre sont rationnelles. Et, pour l'essentiel, elles atteignent leur objectif. Seulement, celui-ci n'est pas de mettre un terme à la crise économique et financière, mais d'en recueillir les fruits, incroyablement juteux. Une crise qui permet de supprimer des centaines de milliers de postes de fonctionnaires (en Grèce, neuf départs à la retraite sur dix ne seront pas remplacés), d'amputer leurs traitements et la durée de leurs congés payés, de brader des pans entiers de l'économie au profit d'intérêts privés, de remettre en cause le droit du travail, d'augmenter les impôts indirects (les plus inégalitaires), de relever les tarifs des services publics, de réduire le remboursement des soins de santé, d'exaucer en somme le rêve d'une société de marché -- cette crise-là constitue la providence des libéraux. En temps ordinaire, la moindre des mesures prises les aurait contraints à un combat incertain et acharné ; ici, tout vient d'un coup. Pourquoi souhaiteraient-ils donc la sortie d'un tunnel qui ressemble pour eux à une autoroute vers la Terre promise ?"

  http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2011/07/HALIMI/20760

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  Economic as well as democratic, the European crisis raises four main questions.  Why are policies which amount to a sure road to bankruptcy nonetheless put into effect in three countries (Ireland, Portugal, Greece) with a ferocity such as has been observed?  Can we call the architects of such choices enlightened when the result --the predictable result-- of each of  their treatments lead to a multiplication of doses?  How is it to be explained under democratic systems that the victims of such prescriptions have no other recourse than to replace one such failed government with another--an ideological twin, detemined to practice the same "shock therapy"?   And, ultimately, could it be otherwise?

     The answers to the first two questions become evident as soon as we depart from the publicity verbiage of 'the general interest,' 'the shared values of Europe,' and 'living together.'   Far from being crazy, the policies being put in place are rational.  And, for the most part, they attain their objective.  It's just that this objective is not to put an end to the economic and financial crises, but to reap the incredibly juicy fruits of these crises.  A crisis which permits the suppression of thousands of public posts (in Greece, nine out of ten departures in retirement will not be replaced), which shortens  salaries and the length of paid leave, which sells off whole sectors of the economy to the benefit of private interests, which placces in question the right to work, which raises indirect taxes (the most inequitable kind), which raises the fees applied to public services, reduces the coverage of public health care, which, in short, realizes the dream of a market society--this crisis is providential for neo-liberals and for attaining their neo-liberal objectives.  In ordinary times, any such measures taken would have forced an uncertain and hard struggle; here, they come all of a sudden. Why would they seek the end of a tunnel that looks like a highway for them to the Promised Land?' "

 

"In such an environment it is not surprising that the ills of technology should seem curable only through the application of more technology..." John W Aldridge