Shadowtraders

In 64 AD, Emperor Nero gave his Roman troops a draconian order to torch the city. For days the citizens of Rome watched their city burn while he stood on the summit of the Palatine playing his lyre, until an estimated half a million people were made homeless. In this way, Nero could then remake the city in his own image. On Saturday, the citizens of Athens, besieged by riots, watched their own city burn, as Germany’s Angela Merkel ordered her own draconian budget cuts, including 150,000 government jobs and a 22% cut in the private sector minimum wage (32 per cent for workers under 25), deregulation of the labor market to facilitate worker layoffs, and overall higher taxes, attempting to remake Greece in Germany’s image. (more…)