Well Duh!! Tensions Rise in Greece as Austerity Measures Backfire

[malaise]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,712511,00.html
<snip>
The austerity measures that were supposed to fix Greece's problems are dragging down the country's economy. Stores are closing, tax revenues are falling and unemployment has hit an unbelievable 70 percent in some places. Frustrated workers are threatening to strike back.

This dire prognosis comes even despite Athens' massive efforts to sort out the country's finances. The government's draconian austerity measures have managed to reduce the country's budget deficit by an almost unbelievable 39.7 percent, after previous governments had squandered tax money and falsified statistics for years. The measures have reduced government spending by a total of 10 percent, 4.5 percent more than the EU and International Monetary Fund (IMF) had required.

The problem is that the austerity measures have in the meantime affected every aspect of the country's economy. Purchasing power is dropping, consumption is taking a nosedive and the number of bankruptcies and unemployed are on the rise. The country's gross domestic product shrank by 1.5 percent in the second quarter of this year. Tax revenue, desperately needed in order to consolidate the national finances, has dropped off. A mixture of fear, hopelessness and anger is brewing in Greek society.
----------
People will fight back - it won't be long.

[RKP5637]

1. +1, And someone unrec'ed this. Can't believe it...

[DJ13]

2. Our own DLC'ers want to do this to the US

Its no wonder they would prefer that no one sees this.

[malaise]

5. It may be their job

:evilgrin:

[villager]

6. The apologists and lapdogs are not only everywhere -- they're in full panic

...since the plans of their keepers, the ones they've been dispatched to defend, are unraveling... well, everywhere....

[Hannah Bell]

3. "backfire" implies they didn't know that cutting public spending would tank the economy,

but they did know.

they didn't care and/or they wanted that result.

[malaise]

4. Yep and they're using the same approach across the globe

The fight back is coming - people will not sit back and watch their lives destroyed.

[Vincardog]

9. + 6 Billion

[valerief]

7. +66 trillion

[Better Believe It]

12. They know. They understand. That's the plan. They hope the anger can be captured and misled by

a bogus "populist" right-wing and that the "left" will continue to sit on its hands and not protest because a Democratic administration is in power.

[TheKentuckian]

8. Obvious consequence of absurd policy prescription

[xchrom]

10. I guess we' have to wait for the surprised comments to come out. Nt

[Better Believe It]

11. The purpose of "austerity" is the driving down of working class living standards via a depression.

Bond holders, investment bankers and financial crooks will be "made whole" and protected.

The rich will not get a "haircut" because working people will get "haircutsplus" .... they will have their hair pulled out .... hair by hair .... under austerity measures.

The Obama deficit commissions will make its proposals for beginning the U.S. austerity campaign right after the elections.

That'll be just Phase I .... cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

And many other bi-partisan austerity measures will be taken soon such as ending federal extended unemployment benefits.

Just don't have the votes in Congress to help working people! But, they will have the bi-partisan votes to stick it to working people!

[scarletwoman]

14. Yup, I'd say you've nailed it.

There will always be bipartisan votes to stick it to the working people, because the pols in DC serve the Owner Class, not the working class.

sw

[Hannah Bell]

15. +100. and the foreclosed homes, businesses, the drawn-down savings of the workers =

the new assets of the rulers.

[Poboy]

16. Good post -nt

[blindpig]

13. They are messing with the wrong people

The serious opposition is back.

We need to be ready, our turn is coming.

[Poboy]

17. "We need to be ready, our turn is coming"

Yes sir.

[Confusious]

19. Just noticed the hammer and sickle on that poster

Communism, that'll work!! :sarcasm:

[blindpig]

20. What that shows is who does the heavy lifting...

when it comes to confronting capitalists.

That sort of clear-sightedness is what we need.

[suffragette]

18. Krugman nailed this right after the G20 austerity agreement was made

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/opinion/28krugman.html?_r=1

The Third Depression

Why the wrong turn in policy? The hard-liners often invoke the troubles facing Greece and other nations around the edges of Europe to justify their actions. And it’s true that bond investors have turned on governments with intractable deficits. But there is no evidence that short-run fiscal austerity in the face of a depressed economy reassures investors. On the contrary: Greece has agreed to harsh austerity, only to find its risk spreads growing ever wider; Ireland has imposed savage cuts in public spending, only to be treated by the markets as a worse risk than Spain, which has been far more reluctant to take the hard-liners’ medicine.

It’s almost as if the financial markets understand what policy makers seemingly don’t: that while long-term fiscal responsibility is important, slashing spending in the midst of a depression, which deepens that depression and paves the way for deflation, is actually self-defeating.

So I don’t think this is really about Greece, or indeed about any realistic appreciation of the tradeoffs between deficits and jobs. It is, instead, the victory of an orthodoxy that has little to do with rational analysis, whose main tenet is that imposing suffering on other people is how you show leadership in tough times.

And who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again.





Naomi Klein did as well:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/g8-g20/opinion/sticking-the-public-with-the-bill-for-the-bankers-crisis/article1620729/
Sticking the public with the bill for the bankers’ crisis
Naomi Klein

Toronto — From Monday's Globe and Mail Published on Sunday, Jun. 27, 2010 7:11PM EDT Last updated on Monday, Jun. 28, 2010 7:33AM EDT

My city feels like a crime scene and the criminals are all melting into the night, fleeing the scene. No, I’m not talking about the kids in black who smashed windows and burned cop cars on Saturday.

I’m talking about the heads of state who, on Sunday night, smashed social safety nets and burned good jobs in the middle of a recession. Faced with the effects of a crisis created by the world’s wealthiest and most privileged strata, they decided to stick the poorest and most vulnerable people in their countries with the bill.

How else can we interpret the G20’s final communiqué, which includes not even a measly tax on banks or financial transactions, yet instructs governments to slash their deficits in half by 2013. This is a huge and shocking cut, and we should be very clear who will pay the price: students who will see their public educations further deteriorate as their fees go up; pensioners who will lose hard-earned benefits; public-sector workers whose jobs will be eliminated. And the list goes on. These types of cuts have already begun in many G20 countries including Canada, and they are about to get a lot worse.