Charles Hugh Smith
Of Two Minds
October 10, 2011

Does anyone take the Merkel-Sarkozy dog and pony show seriously any more? Perception management is not a solution.

For the past 18 months, every time reality threatens to intrude in Europe, Merkel and Sarkozy rush onto the global stage for a repeat performance of their dog-and-pony show. The global media declares it an artistic triumph and the “solution” to Europe’s insolvency.

The fact that we’ve seen the exact same performance repeated again and again appears to be lost on the financial media, which never tires of declaring “this is the solution that will end the European bank crisis.”

A few days or weeks later, reality once again intrudes, the ugly truth of systemic insolvency rears its frightening head once again, and the Dynamic Duo of Eurozone political theater rush onto stage for another tiresome performance of their cliche-ridden dog-and-pony show.

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Few in the corporate media stop to even ask if the dog and the pony even have the power to summarily re-capitalize banks and all the rest of their grandiose pronouncements. Few dare observe that Merkel and Sarkozy might as well demand the seas divide; the situation is out of their control, and their theatrics are all in service of percepotion management, i.e. to foster the illusion they still grasp some meaningful control over the situation (they don’t) and the the situatioin is controllable by manipulation of perception (it isn’t).

Merkel and Sarkozy’s dog and pony show is perception management ripped right from the Federal Reserve’s playbook. The ontological foundation of the Fed’s playbook is this: the problem is all perception. If the great unwashed populace of debt-serfs perceives that all is well and secure, and the Mommy State has tucked them safely into bed, then they will once again start borrowing and spending without a care for either reality or the future.

This is a fundamental ontological error. The problems of the global economy are not based in perception, but in the reality of prices, balance sheets and income statements, vast concentrations of wealth and power, precarious systemic imbalances, ruthless exploitation, and command economies mismanaged by Central State/Bank policy and manipulation.

Sarkozy and Markel’s absurdist theatrics–“we have a secret plan right here in our pockets”–are not just incredible, they are uncredible. How many more times will the global financial media fawn over the same idiotic comedy staged by haggard amateurs?

The day the global audience finally tires of the bumbling act of the Merkel and Sarkozy dog-and-pony troupe, then real solutions–writing off trillions of euros of uncollectable debt and illusory assets, breaking up the dysfunctional Eurozone, etc.–can proceed.

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