Mr Samaras’ government has chosen a very dangerous and a very short term, short sighted course for Greece. A course that, if adhered to as designed, will lead to the total collapse not only of the Greek Economy but of all social cohesion with all that that entails, particularly in the light of the all too predictable (except for the chronically short sighted) rise of the Golden Dawn party.
After doing a complete about turn on all he ever said and promised, Samaras has decided to do everything he condemned in order to… build up confidence in Greece again. In his excellent book “End This Depression Now!” Paul Krugman has some extremely stinging comments to say about calls for “confidence”. It is a nebulous, meaningless concept used to justify stringent austerity, social injustice and arrant cruelty.
We must destroy the economy in order to regain confidence! Is what Samaras is telling us. And how will confidence thus obtained, if obtained at all, benefit the country? Come on! It is confidence for the sake of confidence and to this end we must sacrifice everything, from welfare, education, health, subsistence, demand, even national security. Cuts must be made everywhere and in everything.
All this so that we can regain our confidence, from a man who unashamedly told the whole world from Berlin that all his rhetoric when in opposition was nothing but sinful bull! So true to form he continues with his sinful bull and in his new confidence building deceit he “assures” us that these will be the last such stringent measures. But he doesn’t explain why, he doesn’t explain what these measures will achieve and why we should derive hope from them. Nor even does he set out the “targets” he expects them to achieve.
Then he says something else. Eventually we shall start reversing all these cuts. How and why and what will we have achieved to be able to do this? Again nothing. Just the nebulous, metaphysical assurance that by ruining our economy in such a way we shall have regained “confidence”.
And if Germany decides it would prefer to avoid a Grexit at this point, Greece may well get its 30 bill. Euro, or more likely part thereof. Money, we are assured that “will go into the Greek economy!”. How? Well, the bulk to re capitalizing the banks, and a trifle, perhaps, to go towards a partial payment of the enormous debts to the private sector the government has piled up in a lame attempt to show it has reduced the deficit.
However, Samaras’ decision to implement the troika’s destructive policies to the letter will have destroyed the economy. The banks may well have been re capitalized but there is no assurance liquidity will return to the market. What market? One where the only thing that has been achieved is a further drastic fall in demand? And how will this great achievement lead to anything resembling growth? We are not told that either. Only that growth (another meaningless, nebulous concept in Samaras’ mouth) will come when we have regained “confidence” in this way.
Meanwhile with all the cuts and taxation and general strangulation of the Greek economy, all that has been achieved is a Great Depression, growing unemployment, reaching 50% for the young. As a result our best and brightest, what should have been the blocks to build our future on, that is the educated young, are all fleeing Greece. A recent review has shown that University Professors and academics, whose salaries have been slashed and are to be slashed even more, are also fleeing the country in droves.
So one does have to wonder where exactly is Samaras’ policy building up “confidence”? Nevertheless, he has said something which I fear is absolutely true and which will definitely be born out if he remains in power. And that is, that “in two years, Greece will be unrecognizable!”
Well, yes. It will be, won’t it? A barren waste land populated by goats and a few old codgers of a robust disposition. All the rest will have either gone or died!
Congratulations Mr Prime Minister. What a wonderful way to build up confidence! (In whom? I just can’t help asking yet again. Certainly not in the Greek people!)