"Greece economy is going to be chopped up and sold to highest bidder, many of those foreign"

[Better Believe It]

Senior Greek Official: 'We May Have an Uprising in the Making'
by Jeffrey Kaye
May 6, 2010

What's the Bailout Deal?

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou has a difficult, maybe impossible austerity package to sell to the Greek people. The Greek state has been living on borrowed funds for some time. The bailout deal proposed by the Germans and IMF demands Greece reduce its national borrowing rate from 13.4% of national income to 3% within four years. But where's the money going to come from?

According to another New York Times story:

The new measures include an increase of two percentage points in the value-added sales tax, which is now 19 percent; a further increase in the fuel tax; increases of 20 percent for alcohol taxes and 6 percent for cigarette taxes; a new tax on luxury goods; and a 12 percent cut in supplements to wages for civil servants, Mr. Petalotis said.

They also include a 30 percent reduction in the bonuses given to civil servants as holiday pay, which amount to two additional monthly wages, he said.

The Gerson Lehrman Company describes how the Greek economy is going to be chopped up and sold to the highest bidder, many of those foreign. Of course, they are quite sober about it all:

The government will accelerate privatizations (€ 2.5 bill. budgeted for 2010) and may change its mind regarding majority ownership by strategic (foreign/EU) investors of types of assets / industries that have been protected under the existing social /political model, including utility/infrastructure, transport or special state (monopoly) assets. Examples might include the railway company, water distribution companies, the electricity grid or the power company (PPC), as well as the soccer betting company (OPAP), gambling Casinos and the remaining stake in Hellenic Telecom (OTE), which will probably be sold to Deutsche Telekom. Other interesting candidates for privatization might include airports and seaports and enhanced PPP/PFI models will be considered for infrastructure investments.

So goodbye living wages, goodbye state-run utilities, transport, and telecom. As the quote above makes clear, German companies are primed to sweep up the goodies off the bargain basement floor. This is a bitter pill for the Greeks, who endured Nazi occupation during World War II, which they answered with a large bloody resistance. The old hatreds and resentments still simmer under the surface.

The crisis in Greece and the European Union in general is exposing the deep flaws within the post-Soviet economic and political structure in Europe. The fires in Athens are a harbinger of a bigger crisis to come, one that Americans will have to pay attention to. But do not count on the U.S. press to honestly report what will happen, or the U.S. government to stand aside in neutrality. The Obama administration is pushing the Europeans and the IMF to get the bailout deal in place quickly, even as right-wing Republicans are screaming they will not support the U.S. paying its portion of the IMF bailout funds.

The people of Greece seem determined they will not pay for the orgy of corruption and double-dealing that has left their economy in tatters. Whether it was Goldman Sachs playing funny with derivatives to help the Greek government to hide its debt, or German companies rushing to buy up newly privatized industries, or the wide-spread corruption of Greek politicians, they are saying something that American workers and middle class might be thinking, and that has some people afraid: "'let the plutocracy pay'...'Why should we, the little man, pay for this crisis?'"

Read the full article at:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/05/06-5

[JNelson6563]

1. Yes, typical IMF MO

They are a cancer.

[dmallind]

2. God damn the IMF for thinking people should only be paid for 13.4 months a year not 14! NT

[girl gone mad]

4. Not this bullshit again.

Sheesh, can't you plutocrat ass kissers ever give it a rest?

[marmar]

5. Nope.

It's like the Matrix.....some will fight to defend it.

[dmallind]

8. So it's OK they get 2 mos pay for nothing? That's reasonable in a budget crisis? NT

[starroute]

10. You can't look at it as "pay for nothing"

They're getting a certain annual wage, which for some reason is broken down into 14 rather than 12 monthly chunks.

The real question is whether that annual total is a reasonable figure -- and whether cutting it by 14% will reduce it to less than a living wage.

[ThomWV]

17. You misunderstand - they get underpaid for 10 months, then catch up in the last 2.

[JNelson6563]

11. Wow! Clueless much?

You sure you're at the right place?

Hard to believe we have a DUer here who thinks corporate interests buying public resources is a good thing! Have I stayed to long? Please DU, tell me this ain't the norm 'round here now!

Julie

[marmar]

3. The DU Corporatist Un-Rec'ing Crew has been busy in this post, I see......

nt

[girl gone mad]

6. People are now dying as the deficit terrorists ramp up their attacks

From http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=9544">William Mitchell:

People are now dying as the deficit terrorists ramp up their attacks

Three people are dead in Athens as the people turn ugly against an even uglier ideological push against their welfare. The EMU is now facing an untenable future. Senior policy makers within the EU are now lecturing the UK about the need for harsh fiscal measures following the election. And the UK goes to the polls today and the polls are suggesting “sweeping gains” for the conservatives who are unfit to govern and will drive their economy even further backwards if elected. All of this is unnecessary. All of it a reflection of a failed ideology trying to re-assert itself. The upshot will be that the Eurozone will wallow in crisis for years to come and the rest of us are taking policy positions that will lead to the next crisis – if not a double-dip recession later this year.

Note: the UK Labour Party are also not fit to govern – which just demonstrates how damaging the neo-liberal onslaught on our polity has been over the last few decades. All political parties have started to attract conservatives who just “badge up” with Labour/Liberal/Tory/Democrat/Republican – as career moves and learn to mindlessly recite the mainstream macroeconomics dogma about deficits, public debt, and the rest of it.

As this process of selection has developed, our political parties look more and more alike and the voters have very little real difference. The contest becomes one of selecting which party is proposing the biggest budget surplus in the shortest period of time.

And the slime that makes up my profession – particularly the academic economists and those working in the international organisations like the IMF, the OECD etc – mostly provide support to this vacuous debate with their meaningless “research” papers. Maybe I should have been a geologist or something.

At least the economists were quiet for a while as the global crisis accelerated – given that their models were all shown to be wrong and of no application to anything we might call the real world. But progressively, they have been crawling out of the slime again and seeking to strut the centre stage.

I find it sad (but ironic) that as the world continues to endure the severe economic and financial crisis, that it is the countries with the least fiscal freedom that are now on the brink of collapse – those with fixed or pegged currencies and inflexible fiscal rules that lived the neo-liberal dream to the hilt – deregulated financial markets, lot of foreign-currency debt and the rest of the madness (consider Latvia – now among the poorest advanced nations as a consequence of this free market embrace).

It is also astounding that the economists who vigourously promoted the mainstream free-market anti-fiscal policy agenda are now once again lecturing nations on their policy positions and demanding they cut deficits quickly. Most of them should have been sacked at the onset of the crisis when it was clear they had no idea that it was coming and their textbooks and notes they give to their students contain no capacity to understand what has happened or what the solutions are.

It is extraordinary that their irrelevance has been forgotten and that they can once again command respect in the media as experts with something useful to say.

[FLPanhandle]

7. "The Greek state has been living on borrowed funds for some time"

What I have never heard the Greek officals answer is:

Why didn't the government take care of this problem when it was small and could be handled with minor cuts in spending and new taxes?

Why did the government just continue borrowing 13% of income knowing that a day of reckoning was coming?


People can yell and protest all they want now, but they should have been doing that years ago when the government was digger itself deeper and deeper into a hole it couldn't climb out.

[NNN0LHI]

9. Greece's industrial sector is weak

While it expanded during the 1960s, growth slowed from the 1970s to the 1990s.

Read more: Greece Industry, Information about Industry in Greece http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/economies/Europe/Greece-INDUSTRY.html#ixzz0nG4wgJ4U

[FLPanhandle]

14. So this wasn't a surprise.

I still don't understand why the government there didn't reaction while things were still managable. Did they think they could borrow forever? If I'm a Greek worker, I'm pissed off at my government leaders.

[NNN0LHI]

15. How could it be a surprise when about the only thing they were exporting was bad debt

Ever see anything in the stores labeled Made In Greece?

Don

[troubledamerican]

12. Blueprint of Coming Attractions

[jeanpalmer]

13. "The government will accelerate privatizations"

At the top of the list of privatizations required by the IMF and EU -- privatization of the Greek healthcare system.

[Subdivisions]

16. I'm SHOCKED!

Shock doctrine in action.