The representatives of Greece’s lenders International Monetary Fund, European Union and European Central Bank will visit Athens today. The Bad, the Cursed and the Ugly will have a serious talk with the Greek fellas on privatization, tax evasion, opening of closed professions, labor relaation and the medium-term budget plan for 2012-1015.
Poul Thomsen (IMF), Klaus Masuch (ECB) and Matthias Morse (EU) will have a through plan in their luggage, x written pages for a new Memorandum of Understanding which will have to be signed by the government and voted in the Greek parliament as soon as possible.
The tough guys of Troika are adamant in pushing Greece on the right track of fiscal discipline and do not seem to take into consideration that their plan might not be sustainable.
On the other hand, Greece is in weak negotiation position as it fails to meet budget targets and it hesitates to proceed to radical structural reforms.
According to Greek media, the IMF/EU/ECB is going to put the knife on government’s neck for the issue of privatization and state-run enterprises (DEKO). Here there is going to be a war between the government and the DEKO-labor unions, where governing party PASOK is leading.
Furthermore, Greece’s lenders will ask more spending cuts in allowances, pensions, bonuses etc. and the total collapse of laborers’ rights – in the name of the magic word: Competitiveness! A term which can be translated in ‘work like slave, get no pay’.
Now with a depressing recession and galloping unemployment I wonder where the masses of Greeks will find the money to fund a Memorandum of Understanding signed without their consent.
