The conditionality of the “bailout” loans to Greece has been based on severe austerity and theoretical free-market discipline. This has included massive cuts to health care, education, and infrastructure; layoffs of public and private workers, wage cuts (averaging 30%), pension cuts, and the massive privatization of Greek national properties and operations. The results: The beloved measure of mainstream economics, GDP, has declined 29% since the onset of budget-cutting austerity; Unemployment stands at 25% for the Greek population as a whole, and over 60% for Greek youth. In 2010, I wrote about the “€600 generation” that people worried about. Now, we are literally down to the “€300 generation”(minimum monthly youth wage)—in the name of “competitiveness”, according to the current government; There are up to 300,000 Greek households without electricity, due mainly to the fact that the Troika and its Greek government partners tied newly implemented property taxes to electric bills; Greek sovereign debt stood at 113% of GDP in 2009 and with the Memoranda’s mandatory austerity program has not reduced that, but has increased that debt to 175% of GDP. These numbers alone are worse than the depths of the Great Depression of the 1930s in the United States. commondreams.org/news/2015/01/25/greek-elections-deliver-crushing-blow-brutal-austerity https://youtube/watch?v=dsqcLBevyVA&x-yt-ts=1421914688&x-yt-cl=84503534
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 01:53:30 +0000
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