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Thought for the Day: Austerity and Anti-Semitism in Belgium

Thought for the Day: Austerity and Anti-Semitism in Belgium


Keith Rankin, 4 February 2015

Belgium is the latest victim of Angela Merkel's austerity programme, and its showing up, in part, through a significant increase in anti-Jewish violence.

Belgium is a country known for its private austerity. The Belgian dentist is one of the world's archetypal savers for a reason. Typically (eg in the 1990s) Belgians saved lots and lent their savings mostly to their own government. (The rest they lent to people and governments in other countries.) As a result, Belgium's government has become one of those with a debt-to-GDP ratio over 100%, almost identical to that of the United States. Fortunately for the American people, they do not have Angela Merkel to deal with.

In the years 2000 to 2008, Belgians lent their surpluses almost entirely to other countries in the newly-formed Eurozone. Then from 2009, as economies crashed and tax receipts dived, the Belgian government had to borrow more than its savers could save. Exports could not save Belgium. Other Europeans had shut their wallets. The Belgian government had to borrow from the rest of the world as well as from its own middle class; not something it was used to.

As creditors to Greeks and Spaniards, Belgian savers and voters liked the idea of austerity being imposed upon those countries. But of course recession and deflation make it even harder for countries to service their debts. Belgium is now looking much like these countries; indeed as its economy struggles to find buyers for its goods and services, Belgium has an inflation rate close to minus one percent, similar to Spain (see my recent Deflation article).

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Belgium has undergone austerity to the max under the auspices of a government elected late in 2014. (See The Next Front Against Austerity, Jacobin 29 Jan 2015; Belgium unions protest against austerity cuts, 5 Dec on Al Jazeera.) And Belgium, suffering rising unemployment due to a lack of government spending, is getting in the news for all the wrong reasons, including a sharp growth in anti-Jewish violence. (See, for example, Antisemitism on rise across Europe 'in worst times since the Nazis' and The Brussels Jewish Museum murders came as no surprise to the city's Jews bothGuardian; Belgian public schools becoming 'Jew-free' zones, anti-Semitism watchdog warns, Haaretz [Israel] 20 Jan.)

Anti-semitic waves are often brought out by ongoing financial troubles. It's because Jews have a long historical association with the financial services industry, and that industry unreasonably took all the blame for the global financial crisis. Given that Jews have been popular scapegoats to Christians for two millennia, anti-semitism is always going to be a probable response to systemic problems arising from our own austerity.

We should be very careful to ensure that our analyses or presumptions about events do not scapegoat any particular ethnic, religious of cultural groups. The global financial crisis was not caused by the finance sector, let alone by Jews. The finance sector responded like any other to demands placed upon it. The fact that many bankers often behaved boorishly did not mean that bankers caused either the global financial crisis or the Eurozone crisis.

While these systemic financial problems can be understood, it is not at all clear that we really want to understand them. We just want to finger-point. In the meantime public austerity piled on top of private austerity simply does not compute. European Governments, and the people who elect austerity, have not learned the lessons of the 1930s.

My spending is your employment. Your spending is my employment. When neither you nor I spend, then neither I nor you are employed. We can't blame the Jews. This problem was created by you and me.

ENDS

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