Five years after the outbreak of the euro crisis, Greece
still lies in shambles. The government and the Troika cling to hopes of
“pre-crisis prosperity” but reality paints a different picture – a very, very
bleak one.
I visited Athens last week, leaving on Sunday, just days
before the Troika arrives to investigate Greece’s progress. This is a visit
that everyone who – through journalism and academia – develops opinions about
“the Crisis” and “the periphery” really ought to make.
The families I met in Greece lack the luxury of talking
about politics as though it exists in the realm of theory: evening after
evening I heard stories of fathers whose shops, restaurants and construction
businesses have been driven into bankruptcy, or have lost their jobs and cannot
live off the (ever-reducing) pensions they earned over 40 years of work. Their
sons have finished apprenticeships or degrees only to enter the world of an
endless search for any kind of work coupled with ever diminishing expectations.
The German “Bild” stereotype of the ‘lazy Greek’ ignores the bitter fact that
there are no jobs for people my age to enter. None……To Read More…
My Take – And her solution is what? Build
more infrastructure? And the money is to come from where? And just how
sustainable is that over the long haul? The reason the ‘Troika’ (The European Commission, the International Monetary Fund, and the
European Central Bank) won’t let them spend their money on infrastructure is because it’s
not a solution; it's a waste; and it’s their money!
Of course none of this is the fault of
the government or banks. It is the fault
of the private sector! Wow…I’m impressed! But wait….I just had a thought; what exactly does that mean?
Does that mean people are deliberately going bankrupt? Does that mean that businesses don’t want to
succeed? Does that mean there is some
kind of strange mental aberration among those with investment dollars to keep
everyone impoverished and starving? Exactly
how has the private sector failed Greece?
As a businessmen I talk to a lot of other businessmen, large and small, and they're
concerned with growing business in a stable economy. So how exactly is this the fault of the
private sector? I thought it was the
government that set the standards in Greece for the private sector and the
banks. And the banks are probably in cahoots with the government as they are
everywhere. But yet we're to believe it’s not their fault!
Well, if they’re the ones making all the
rules…..how can this not be their fault?
This woman must have a good mind with the ability to hold
more than one thought in her head at one time without counting on her fingers
and toes. After all, she was a finalist in the World Debating
Championship. So what did she say that was meaningful? She tells us the Greeks
are suffering. Wow….who knew!
The Greeks are suffering the consequences of their own socialist
vision, and when they riot what do they riot for; more capitalism or more
socialism? And as with all socialist
governments you eventually run out of other people’s money, and now they’re out
of their own money and everyone else’s.
Even a rock star, Bono, has come to realize that charity is
only a stop gap measure. The only answer is capitalism, especially what used to
be American style capitalism; a system that brought more people out of misery,
squalor and suffering than any the world has ever known.
Three things are clear to me. This woman knows squat about
what is actually causing Greece’s inability to emerge from this economic morass
of their own making. It is also clear to me that the Greeks can’t emerge from
this mess for the same reason they’re there in the first place; incompetent
corrupt leadership, bad tax policies, too many regulations, too much government
and too many special considerations for the privileged few, i.e. socialism. And finally, the competition at the World Debating Championships must not be that good.
And I would love to know just how building more
infrastructure is going to fix any of that!
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