Reportedly this is what our dear friend, the middle prong of the troika, Poul Thomsen (the IMF guy) has said about the new and worse strait jacket the so called Greek government has agreed to without a murmur. Oh, and of course he also says that if the Greeks to not adhere to it strictly, it wont work. Clever that. When we all go belly up because of their crazy remedy of continual blood letting, it will be our fault.
We’ve heard of that somewhere before, haven’t we? Where was it now? Oh yes! The rapist’s defense! She asked for it! It was her fault for wearing a sexy dress (or whatever). So they’re off the hook . It’s their fault! Finger pointed straight in our face along with school yard rhyming taunts. The taunts of the bully against the weakling.
And okay, this is just another botch up leading Greece closer and closer to outright bankruptcy after the partial default and no one expects this idiotic recipe for recovery to achieve anything other than more recession, more misery and more suicides.
Now, the other prong of the troika, Matthias Mors appeared very pleased with how the Greeks had slashed minimum wages (by 32% for the young) only this wasn’t enough and had really only gone half way. Half way to what? Well, the slash, he said had already made us more competitive. Really? How? And how the hell do they purport to have measured anything of all the nonsense economics they keep spewing out?
It’s not economics at all. It’s metaphysics when you claim to be able to predict what a country’s GDP will be in 8 years, or to have seen a tangible change in competitiveness (which, by the way, is also a mere metaphysical notion and not a tangible one the way they use it) only a few weeks after the slashes have been enacted? Did they really take effect in so short a time? And what figures bear any of this nonsense out? Or is it perhaps that the most competitive economy is the one with the highest unemployment rate?
Sorry, but apart from metaphysics it also sounds like an oxymoron to me. Oh don’t you go using those fancy Greek words with me, my dear! The troika, like Thatcher before them, always knows best.
But this Matthias Mors (he’s the one with the horrible hair cut) did mumble something. Though delighted by the slashing of income, he did think that there was a problem with prices. They really should go down too. Well they should, shouldn’t they? So what does he propose to do about that then? The troika comes down hard on the so called Greek government when it comes to slashing pensions and wages but when it comes to getting prices into synch, that is getting them to fall, there is an eerie silence.
You see, from the little economics they know, they assume that with income being slashed demand goes down. And it has gone down. In which case prices should go down too. So why haven’t they? Is what Matthias Mors seems to be asking. However he has the answer even if he’d rather not look at it. Perhaps the main reason for prices going up in Greece is the exorbitant taxation that has been slapped on everything from petrol to soft drinks. That is, apart from pushing VAT up to high heaven, they have also put extra consumption taxes on things like petrol, natural gas and other necessities. (In fact something like 75% of the price of petrol is taxation. Consumption of petrol has gone down enormously. Only prices haven’t of course. No because it’s the taxes, stupid!)
But Mr Mors didn’t feel the need to dwell on it. Perhaps he realised what the problem was as soon as he’d mentioned it. Who knows? And who cares?
But back to Poul Thomsen’s remark of this being Greece’s last chance. Last chance for what? He didn’t say. Just ‘last chance’, implying what? That Greece will cease to exist? Does he imagine Greece is just a subsidiary company that will be wound down and have its assets sold off? That’s what it sounds like. And Greece’s assets will be sold off. Our so called government has already signed all Greek rights to everything away. But what then? End of story? The employees of a company that is wound down get laid off. Some get work elsewhere, others go on the dole for a while and that is that. Is that how Poul Thomsen imagines the end of Greece will play out? Like the ‘end’ of Lehman Brothers?
Well okay. We know their economics are Nonsense Economics. But it also looks as though their Politics are Nonsense Politics too. Well that makes sense. How else to explain the plethora of idiocies (Greek words again) mouthed by these undignified dignitaries?
But do be careful dear Poul, hubris is followed by nemesis before catharsis is achieved.