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tagged: Argentina, bankruptcy, blackmail, default, evangelos venizelos, Finance Minister, Greece, tangoNew Greek Patriotic Doctrine: “Pay or Argentina!”
Posted by keeptalkinggreece in Politics
That the majority of Greeks and their elected politicians live in parallel universes is not a secret. The deeper the crisis, the wider the gap. Then while the citizens struggle to cope with a tsunami of taxes, levies and high prices, the politicians think that the crisis in not here yet. That bankrupt citizens have nothing to do with a bankrupt country. In fact, that is something we’ve stressed earlier, that is, that in order to save Greece, Greeks will need to go bankrupt! During a meeting with the President of the Republic Karolos Papoulias, Venizelos said: The situation is extremely critical and dangerous, this is not the crisis but a very hard attempt to avoid the crisis. People think that the crisis is what we live now, with the wages, incomes and pensions cuts, the decrease of the perspectives for the youth. But it is not.” And he explained diplomatically avoiding to mention the over 800,00 jobless, the majority of them without unemployment allowances or any other benefit and omitting the public angers:
“The crisis, that is Argentina in 2000, that is the complete dissolution of the economy, of the institutions, social fabric and the productive base of the country.”
And where is Greece’s crisis? In the middle of the road? Somewhere between Greece and Argentina lies Chicago… Wasn’t it Prime Minister George Papandreou who said just a recently that “we are in the middle of the road’?
After the meeting Venizelos left the Presidential office in his luxury BMW 840 . Greek blogs claim that the armoured car with all the extra snicks and snacks must have cost some 750K euro.
It has not made public what the President of the Republic told Evangelos Venizelos. Probably “Be patient!”…
Meanwhile other PASOK party officials and deputies adopted the new Venizelos doctrine “Pay or Argentina” and urged citizens “who fundamentally can afford to pay, to do their duty to their country, with the knowledge that this problem will yield to lift the country from the impasse and for the future of our children.”
Some journalists asked whether bankrupt people also is the same as bankrupt country. Then the PASOK official heralded:
“If the country goes bankrupt like Argentina did, then there will be nothing and that will have no comparison to what we live here”.
On many Internet forums many Greeks reminded the political leadership that the Argentinian president left the country by helicopter – in the darkness of the night…
Between Athens and Buenos Aires, Greeks try just to keep their dignity dancing tango to the tunes of the bandoneon played by the ghost of bankruptcy….
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The saddest thing is that if the country would have gone bankrupt a year ago, it would be starting to re-function by now. Big difference is that THEN most of us still had some money in reserve. That has gone in delaying the inevitable.
So, we had the chance to let the country go bankrupt and let the Greek people survive. Now we don’t. Great!
Here come the donkeys!!!
you really believe that we woulod have money if the country would have gone bankrupt???? That’s ‘romantic’ in the bad sense. Argentina hasn’t teached you anything?
It is just of Argentina that I try to think of other ways. They got out of the peso-lock to the US-dollar when their economic system crashed. People storming banks in desperation because their accounts were frozen and dwindled away.
Then it looked like Argentina started sort of booming because of their low peso. Great. Exports grew. Country got back on it’s feet. Then inflation started to rear it’s ugly head. In double figures now. Exports are dwindling. And now the government is starting to close off the economy from the outside world by ever growing import restrictions. And formost: it looks like the same old nomenklatura survived all this. It seems like they are back on the road to nowhere.
If Greece would default in the euro, it could get the time to really change its rotten system. Then a huge haircut of 80 percent or so.
Greeks would be in dire straits for one or two years. EU-funds could be used to pay for unemployment benefits. In the mean time the whole economy would be freed from the worst excesses of bureaucracy. There are so many people around here with great ideas and knowledge that are willing to set up a company, alone or together. But they are all killed off by the State. Who isn’t afraid of the crazy TEBE-system?
All this can be done with support of the other euro-countries. But therefore Greece need to remain in the euro. If it will step out of it, all the crooks that have profited the last ten years and did prosper during the Drachma time will still prosper. And the average Greek will still be under their shackles. Last but not least, the EU-will not allow the cheap Greek produce to come on it’s market. And if Greek is also thrown out of Schengen, Greeks who want to work in the rest of Europe will be on par with Turks, Ukrainian and so on.
And how much will remain of the great Chinese investments? China will quickly look for a port in Europe and Piraeus will be nicely Greek again.
The great dragging of feet we see by the Greece nomenklatura is so great for the other Europeans. They have time to get out of trouble. German banks are now ‘safe’, about Italy reports are starting to appear that their finances are not as bad as it looked and now with the reforms… Of Spain is said that they made big leaps, although their labor market is still horrible. See the pattern. Greeks are beaten up by their own government and drained of their strength. The longer this goes on less chance for us all to get on our feet when the opportunity arises. And that’s just what the Greek nomenklatura wants.