Another socialist experiment fails

Gordon Bajnai, the newly appointed prime minister of Hungary doesn’t have an easy task in front of him. The former Prime Minister and “former” communist, Ferenc Gyurcsany, stepped down in March partly because he couldn’t get his economic reforms supported in parliament, but also (mainly) because he was highly unpopular. Now this country face dire circumstances. Hungary is one of the European countries that have been hit hardest by current financial crisis. It barely avoided financial meltdown already during 2008 when EU, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank stepped in with a €20 billion bailout and the situation haven’t improved, rather worsened. Interesting scenario in regard to the g20 promises of trillions of dollars going to similar stupid countries. Isn’t it?

The main reason for this country being completely broke isn’t so much the financial crisis in itself, that’s rather icing on the cake. Instead the socialist have more or less abolished working.

“In a country with a population of 10 million, only 3.9 million people are working. And 1.6 million of those are on minimum wage and do not pay taxes. There are almost 3 million pensioners, of whom over 800,000 are on disability pension, meaning they retired long before the age of 65, citing often dubious health problems.” new

All this is courtesy of the government’s lavish promises and, during the better years that partly was because of foreign investments, but mainly thru borrowing. Hm, were have we heard that word before? Another fun fact is that most of the loans taken are from Austria which leaves several Austrian banks in a bit of a pickle. The Hungarian's used this money, and then some, to build social welfare nets and impose laws that made it more lucrative to not work. To this we can also add the Hungarian currency that is dropping due to inflation and less in-house productivity.

And, of course, waiting in the wings are one of those funny men who speaks of “true Hungarians” and promises millions of jobs and tax-cuts at the same time he talks about “strong government attending the need of the people”. This guy, Viktor Orbán, the leader of the biggest opposition party Fidesz, has also spoken of the struggle “true Hungarians” face against the “forces of evil”.

No one really knows how he is going to perform this magic trick with the economy, but if he fails, which he will, there are several other extremist groups willing to take over. Several of these are reported having “paramilitary fractions” eager to “keep order”.

So we have a financial crisis times two (2*socialism), a real messy political situation with numerous different extremist groups banging on the door to real power, several of which are talking about “the others” - in different forms - as a main scapegoat. Unemployment is rising (from already very high levels), debts souring, inflation growing and people are already beginning to starve and the world crisis is just starting. How many believe this is going to have a happy ending?