By William K. Black
July 5, 2016 Bloomington, MN
Jim Yardley – Part 5
Jim Yardley wrote a column entitled “Populist Anger Upends Politics on Both Sides of the Atlantic.” Yes, anyone in the UK who supported BREXIT is just like an American supporter of Donald Trump because they are angry. Indeed, it’s “the same” as every non-establishment politician and political supporter throughout Europe and the U.S.
The same yawning gap between the elite and mass opinion is fueling a populist backlash in Austria, France, Germany and elsewhere on the Continent — as well as in the United States.
As Tony Blair’s column correctly noted, however, the leadership of the pro-BREXIT movement was ultra-elite. Elite opinion was fractured in the UK along multiple fault lines. EU “elites” have, of course, brought the EU over a decade of massive bubbles, widespread fraud by financial elites, financial crises, a Great Recession, an economically illiterate response to the Great Recession that forced much of the eurozone into Great Depression level unemployment. Oh, and those elites have been exposed in far too many cases as tax frauds and cheats. Oh, and the head of EU Commission is the guy who turned Luxembourg into a “let’s make a secret deal” cesspool for large corporations seeking to evade paying taxes. The dominant EU elites are colossal failures in terms of competence and ethics. Any rational, adult citizenry would reject the dominant EU elite “opinion.” Yardley admits at one point that the rejection is rational.
