A couple of missives

Dear Christine Lagard,

Please, allow me to correct a small error on your statements, yesterday, on Aix-en-Provence.

You've admitted, again, errors in the IMF policies. You've mentioned that admitting failure is the IMF's tradition, and you also noted that you've been, shall we say, insulted, when doing so in the past.

However, there's a small point missing from your line of reasoning. It is true that you have been treated in a fashion one might consider less than appropriate; however, the cause for such treatment lies not in your admission(s) of error, but rather in the baffling decision to ignore every shred of evidence that contradicts your beliefs.

And, while I'll certainly agree that the IMF has admitted its errors, I have also heard its staff in the troika shedding any responsibility for the poor results in Portugal, and placing it squarely in the shoulders of the Portuguese government. Perhaps your memo about admitting one's mea culpa has not yet reached the four corners of your organization?

What portrays you (and your associates, be it the ECB, the Bundesbank, or our ex-Finance Minister Vito Gaspar) as incompetent for the task you're supposed to be carrying out is not only the lack of results, but also this apparent inability to listen to those who do not share your beliefs.

You'll notice I've mentioned beliefs in this text, and in bold, no less! That stems from the fact that we're talking in the context of Economy. Were we talking in the context of a science, say, Physics, where one can apply an actual bona fide scientific method, I'd probably say hypotheses, instead of beliefs. However, Economy is not a science, and I can't refer to the application of formulas in Excel as "scientific method"; well, not with a straight face, anyway.

So, at the end of the day, Economy is little more than a religion. You make some prayers (no, the fact that your altar can perform millions of arithmetic/logic operations per second does not make it any better than other altar), you go forth with your holy workbooks, and you take on the world with your very peculiar version of "Smite the Infidel (or, at Least, Make Him Jobless and Remove All Wellfare Assistance)".

Which is why, dear madam, I'll give you the same credibility I give any other fundamentalist organization. And that, I'll wager, is what lies behind the lack of respect you mention.

Dear Fellow Europeans,

Yes, it's me again.

You might recall when I first addressed you, as EU taxpayers, and said this: "especially in a country with such an appalling judiciary as Portugal".

You might be tempted to ask "How appalling could it be?", right? Well, there are countless examples, but I'll share one with you, just because it's "fresh from the oven".

It's story of a woman who had an illegal nursery in an apartment. She took care of 17 babies/young children. Of course, care might be a bit misplaced here.

The woman's neighbours filmed her from across the street. She hit them constantly and repeatedly. What's the difference? Constantly means all the time; repeatedly means several times in succession, as in one occasion where a child is slapped in the face 7 times in a row. She fed them all from the same plate, with the same spoon/fork, with the same napkin (which, as seen on film, also doubles up as her nose handkerchief).

A news reporter from one of our TV stations (SIC) went there, with a hidden camera, posing as a mother looking for a nursery. The woman admitted she was operating illegally. The woman blatantly lied about the way she treated children (well, naturally). During the whole time, no child or baby made a sound, or moved from his mattress, or acknowledged, in any fashion, the arrival of a strange person in the apartment.

The woman is now required to go to court, which has been decided on 2013-07-04. So, how is this appalling? Well, the process was filed on 2011-05-27.

Yep, you got that right, my fellow Europeans. More than 2 years to bring this woman to court. And we had a film of the repeated aggressions, we had an admission of illegality also on film, and, to bring this to a whole new level of surrealism, the woman had already been caught by the authorities running an illegal nursery before.

Remember when I said I didn't understand how could you let investigations concerning your money in the hands of these people? Well, as the song went, I know a little...