This weekend 27/6/2015 the dices rolled and the
fate isn’t obvious yet. From one hand we
have the heavyweight champions of EU & Co and from the other hand the fly
weight champion aka Greece. The situation had a favored boxer from the
beginning and so their respective strategies were laid down accordingly. The
big one punches, the little tries to fake, but even the blow from the near
passing hand of his opponent sakes him all over. The big one in any interval
between the negotiating rounds shakes the opponent’s hand telling him how brave
he’s and congratulating him for the good fight. That was all folks until this
last weekend.
The
little one shaken but not stirred tried to give his first punch back. Many may
think that this was the last heroic exit, or the desperate’s move, or the
insane‘s act of grandeur. The big one was taken by surprise. He definitely
didn’t expect the act of fool he received. He though the minion was under his
straight control. But dear EU bureaucrats the flood of money isn’t the flood of
blood. And blood is a boiling thing. Too much pressure and it can erupt. Now
Europe is between two silly boxers with enough adrenaline on their head and exhausted
to see it’s other standing on the ring. The problem is that those were also the
two parts of a happy marriage and gave everlasting promises to each other.
Furthermore they got too many bets on how well there are going to be all the
European countries in this marriage and for the first years they delivered too.
Now they try to out intimidate each other, but without the power and the
courage to take this last punch until recently.
As
mentioned in this family of boxing aspirations the fight went out of hand. In most
of the families it’s the little one that causes the troubles, but the big one
that gets accused. Well not exactly this time. That was before the news stopped
being just the news and became the global media product they are today. So we
hear all about the demerits of the little one from the European media. Yes,
this little folk shouldn’t be trusted. He’s a constant underachiever. He never
performs what he promises. He resists financial logic in a maniacal way. He
can’t perform on his own strength any reform and further, even if he makes one,
he can’t assure it really works. He has a byzantine public system that’s a Damocles blade hanging above any productivity attempt. Consequently, this
little one was treated as a drug addict from the European family. They served
him the medicine the EU doctors subscribed him. They substituted his loans with
other loans. That homeopathic procedure usual tends to lower the dependency by
gradually lowering the dose. Not in this case. The druggie got hooked deeper
and deeper in his loan addiction.
Let’s’
see the clinical situation of Greece before it entered this boxing contest of
negotiations in 2009 from the Greek citizen point of view. This person knew
that by that time every born and resided in Greece owned to the county’s
creditors nearly 23.000.00€ per head. So for a family of 4 persons this meant approximately
92.000, 00€. The EU wanted those money fast enough to close the mouth of every
news producer in the world. How fast could this happen? Not as fast as
intended. So they went the other way around. They let
the things take a long way, so long that the problem would have fall out of
sight. Things didn’t work well. The medicine didn’t prove to be having the
right effects, and the maleness didn’t go out of sight. EU officials though
that a reassuring verbalism and their authority will be enough for the rest of
the world, but dear lords when money talks you know very well who walks. Everybody
else apart the Troika founders believed that the measures taken for Greece
where ineffective.
You
have to get your mouth were you get your money, so the rest of the world rested
a spectator to this experiment. But one has to ask was the rescue of Greece the
real purpose of all this? Ok, there’s no easy straight answer. Little traces, the
actual facts, can lead you closer to the truth. From when troika went to Greece
there was 25% reduction to the salaries, reduction of the pensions, the unemployment
raised 25%, 60% of the youth unemployment, a consistent raise of the taxes and
the introduction of many new ones. That’s only the economic part. There are 4 straight
years that deaths are more than the births in Greece, there is raise of the
number of people without medical care and people who go too late to the doctors
and they just pass away in the hospitals. There was reduction of the public
cost and now the Greek state produces less than the already little it did. Up
to a point many of the negative effects were responsibility of the Greek government
to resolve and to protect during the negotiations, but it failed either to make
its point, either to raise its productivity. The Greek government only posed
resistance on the reduction of its payroll.
The
Troika in those five years made all the calls. There was no legislation regarding
or affecting money that could pass without their approval. So the lenders had
total control of the Greek economy and in many ways of the Greek government.
What ever happened in Greece those five years was under there strait control
and influence. E.g. you can find clear evidence of this by reading the comments
of Samaras before and after he was named PM. Democracy was clearly in decline
in Greece. Most of the legislation was imposed and never got past the
parliament. Three people and their employers took and hold the fate of Greece
those last five-six years. Another evidence is that from one hand they
introduced tax legislature every three to four months and from the other hand
they asked the Greek government to attract foreign investments. So it’s pretty unclear
how the lenders accuse the Greek government about the failure of their
implemented program. From one hand they overestimated the public property for privatization
and then accused the Greek government for the lack of success on the matter
(here they had some right). There’s an abundance of things like this during the
last five years that points towards one reasonable conclusion. Troika and the
lenders of Greece had only one interest, to get their money back as soon as possible,
even by inflicting damage to the Greek’s state longevity. The flow of cash from
Greece to their banks (lenders) was the only prior criteria and the Greek government
had all the responsibility to hold its ship together. You may think that this
is in reality a government’s job, but the facts show that for maximizing the
flow of cash they minimized the power of the government. As a byproduct they constituted
an already inefficient government in an incapacitated one. The quality of Greek’s
government was in the lenders knowledge from a long time as you can see in the
prior note http://ninemia-nemo.blogspot.gr/2015/05/eu-greek-crisis.html.
Obviously
this five years economic experiment was a complete failure. This is more evident
if you think that after those efforts and all those years every Greek citizen
owns now to his lenders 35.000.00€ per capita, a raise of nearly 12.000.00€ per
person. That’s 2.400.00€ per year raise. When the lenders should have noticed?
From the Greek citizens point of view the following weekend’s referendum has no
meaning. He knows that whatever he chooses he has no escape. It’s only the
timetable of his default & foreclosure that’s on the table. The thinking of
this government is still unclear, but taking note of the above mentioned is it
totally wrong in its act? On the other hand by putting Greece out of Europe is
there any hope for Greece? In a globalized world, probably not? Can it stay in
Europe and in the Euro zone? Difficult, very difficult. So the real question is
“are the lenders so stupid to kill this country if they want their money back”?
