BAZAAR OF ATHENS
The year is drawing to a close and Greece is imploding.
After almost five years of extreme economic rigor which crushed the low and middle classes that fell outside the protective umbrella of the ruling kleptocracy, complete and final bankruptcy is once again looming ahead.
Our laughably incompetent government switched into militant anti-European mode back in May. They began trumpeting the exit from the EU-IMF program, peddling the lie that they had fulfilled all its requirements. In fact they had carried out none of the structural reforms they had signed on to. The public sector is as corrupt as ever and the economy is still in the hands of the scandalously privileged unions and various private business mafias that have the political personnel in their pay.
The only thing the government have managed is to balance the budget by a) not paying the state's debt to private individuals and b) by taxing to death small businesses and the average wage-earner. So, when they tried to once again draw financing from the international markets they received a drubbing, and the rates of return on Greek government bonds skyrocketed back in October. Ever since they have been "negotiating" with the EU-IMF about not fulfilling commitments they agreed to and wrote into law back in 2012. No wonder that the talks ground to a screeching halt.
Meanwhile, the inability to elect a new President of the republic in the present parliament makes an early election highly probable by next spring. So, come the new year the country is threatened with the perfect storm: no international financial protection program, hence no liquidity to the Greek banks from Frankfurt, no legitimate head of state, a government at the end of its tether and the general chaos that ordinarily ensues during election time and which nearly drove the country out of the EU in 2012.
Except that this time the consequences of a Greek exit are much more manageable for Europe. We are rapidly sliding back to our age-old Balkan malaise, if not straight into a fourth-world vegetative state.
In all this the "radical left" opposition is touting its own magic potion: if they gain power they will demand of the EU to forgive most of the country's colossal debt (primarily owed at this point to governments, i.e. to the European tax-payer) and if they refuse Greece will default on its obligations. What they will do if the international community slams the door in their face they don't say. Also, they will provide thousands of new public sector jobs, and increase drastically the minimum wage as well as public works spending. All this out of non-existent financial resources.
When they presented this farcical concoction to international lenders in London a couple of weeks ago, they were laughed out of the room. If they mean all this balderdash (and it seems that they do), Greece is out of the Euro overnight and, given that the country imports everything it needs, shortages and monster inflation will result. They are then going to be chased down the streets by stone-throwing crowds, the very same ones that are now cheering them on convinced by them that it rains pennies from heaven.
So all in all, both government and opposition are locked in embrace as they lead the country dancing down the cliff. They keep hurling obscenities at each other, to be sure, as they are wrestling for power. But to have power for themselves alone is their only aim -and their only difference. Apart from that they are in profound agreement that the mafia-ridden system of nationalist-Stalinist statism that ruined the country was just about perfect and that it was the "evil foreigners" that swooped down on us uninvited to disturb our bliss. This is the mentality that also grips the people at large, beaten into their brains by the mass media, themselves prime beneficiaries of the rotten system. As long as these conditions prevail there is no salvation, however you finesse the economic figures here and there.
