#greece austerity

[newstfionline]

Hundreds of Thousands Strike in Greece as Cuts Near Approval

By Niki Kitsantonis, NY Times, May 17, 2017

ATHENS--Hundreds of thousands of Greeks walked off the job on Wednesday, heeding the call of labor unions to join a 24-hour general strike to protest a new round of austerity measures that was nearing approval in Parliament.

The effects of the strike, which came in response to pledges from the leftist-led government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to the country’s international creditors, were widespread: Flights and public transport were disrupted, ships were left anchored at Greek ports, government offices were shut and hospitals were forced to operate with emergency staff.

Greece has been struggling for years to dig its way out of an economic crisis, and even though there has been progress, unemployment is at 23 percent and the country is largely dependent on its international creditors.

Demonstrations were held in Athens and other major cities including Thessaloniki, Patras and Iraklio against the new round of belt-tightening, which calls for pension cuts from 2019 and tax increases from 2020 that together would save about 5 billion euros, or $5.5 billion.

The protests were mostly peaceful, although a group of around 20 hooded youths in Athens broke away from a crowd in the early afternoon and hurled stones and flares at riot police officers.

As is usually the case, only a small fraction of those on strike joined protests in the street. About 12,000 people gathered in the Greek capital, according to police estimates, a small turnout compared with previous rallies, reflecting public fatigue after years of strikes and demonstrations.

In a statement, the Greek civil servants’ union, Adedy, called the measures “barbaric.” It decried what it said was the “looting of wages and pensions” and a “sellout” of state assets, referring to plans to privatize Greece’s state power board and other public bodies.

“The memorandums have consciously crushed small and medium-sized businesses,” Thanos Vasilopoulos of Greece’s private sector union, GSEE, told the leftist radio station Sto Kokkino on Wednesday morning, referring to three foreign bailouts that successive governments have agreed to since 2010. “Basically they have created an army of 1.5 million unemployed.”

Although some members of Mr. Tsipras’s government have expressed opposition to the new measures, coalition lawmakers are expected to approve them in a parliamentary vote on Thursday night.

In a bid to win over wavering lawmakers and placate a public weary of seven years of austerity, the government has also prepared legislation that would introduce some so-called countermeasures, including social benefits for the poor from 2019, but only if budget targets are met.

Greece, which has effectively been under the supervision of international creditors since 2010, has imposed wave after wave of austerity in return for bailout loans to keep its economy afloat.

The fiscal discipline has improved the country’s finances but has left one in four Greeks unemployed and slashed household incomes by a third, and the ratio of its debt to its gross domestic product remains the highest in the eurozone.

[newstfionline]

As austerity and graft gnaw, crisis-stricken Greece defies expectations

By Jason Thomson, CS Monitor, December 8, 2016

Q. What caused the economic crisis?

Greece’s fiscal woes were precipitated by the global financial meltdown of 2008, but founded in fundamental weaknesses in the Greek economy. The main problems were a high level of debt and a large budget deficit. The Great Recession gradually diminished Greece’s ability to borrow from international markets, forcing it to seek financial assistance.

Greece has so far received more than €325 billion ($345 billion) in bailout loans, one of the largest financial rescue packages in history. Aid has come from the so-called troika: the International Monetary Fund, European Commission, and European Central Bank.

The policies implemented have resulted in an unemployment rate above 20 percent, with a drop in economic output of about a third--akin to the decline in the United States during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

“Lots of people say Greece has been imposing very austere policy,” says Lucas Papademos, Greece’s prime minister from 2011 to 2012, but, he explains, creditors want “assurances they will be paid back,” along with economic adjustments to address the imbalances that led to the situation in the first place.

The former prime minister wonders whether perhaps the “magnitude of the medicine” was too much.

Q. Are Greece’s internal troubles solely economic?

In short, no. As Constantine Arvanitopoulos, a former minister of education for Greece, put it this fall, “the crisis is primarily a political and constitutional one.” Talking of corruption at “all levels of the social pyramid,” he lamented that the Greek state had become a “trophy for partisan politics.” Mr. Arvanitopoulos took part in a panel discussion at an event titled Greece’s Turn?, hosted by the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Medford, Mass.

Certainly, the political landscape has been in flux since the debt crisis struck. After the interim government of Mr. Papademos negotiated the second bailout package and completed implementation of the first, a coalition emerged, the first time in almost four decades that one of the two major parties did not hold the reins of power.

Two and a half years later, in January 2015, Greeks voted in the Coalition of Radical Left, commonly known as Syriza, which campaigned on an anti-austerity platform. That July, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras called a snap referendum to vote on conditions attached to the third bailout package. The people spoke, overwhelmingly rejecting the agreement. But faced with the prospect of economic collapse, the prime minister did a U-turn and accepted a deal. In elections that September, Syriza won again, this time taking an opposite stand, promising to implement austerity measures.

Q. What about ‘Grexit’?

Grexit is the scenario in which Greece leaves the eurozone--distinct from “Brexit,” which is Britain’s divorce from the European Union. Most observers agree that in the summer of 2015, Greece and the eurozone came within a whisker of embracing this reality.

“Together, we have looked into the abyss,” said Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, in August 2015, but “Greece is and will irreversibly remain a member of the Euro area.”

Some analysts now believe the possibility of Grexit looms again--when Europe is already groaning under the burden of Brexit, not to mention the migrant influx and a spate of terrorism.

Such a move might not be in Greece’s interest, either. “It is inconceivable ... to imagine circumstances where Grexit would be good for Greece,” says Kyriakos Mitsotakis, president of the New Democracy party and leader of the opposition in the Greek Parliament. Mr. Mitsotakis and Papademos both delivered speeches at the Fletcher School event.

Q. How are relations with Turkey?

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed regret in September over the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, in which he said Turkey “gave away” islands to Greece. This has triggered anxiety about the countries’ relationship, but as James Stavridis, a former supreme allied commander at NATO and now dean of the Fletcher School, explains, Mr. Erdogan has more pressing matters to consider.

“I think Erdogan does not wake up every morning worried about Greece,” he says. “He has bigger problems on his hands--a restive Kurdish population, [Islamic State] terrorist incidents, as well as a massive civil war on his border” in Syria.

Yet as Mitsotakis points out, the bilateral relationship depends largely on that between the EU and Turkey--which, in turn, rests in no small part on the refugee deal between those two entities. But whatever transpires, Mitsotakis remains “cautiously optimistic,” saying that Greece and Turkey are “bound by history and geography to live together.”

[newstfionline]

‘We will come to Athens and burn them’: political protest returns to Greece

Helena Smith in Athens, The Guardian, 21 January 2016

Farmers’ roadblocks, ferries immobilised in ports, pensioners taking to the streets: protest has returned to Greece in what many fear could be the beginning of the crisis-plagued country’s most confrontational winter yet.

From the Greek-Bulgarian frontier to the southern island of Crete, farmers are up in arms over the spectre of more internationally mandated austerity.

“It’s war,” says Dimitris Vergos, a corn grower speaking from the northern town of Naoussa. “If they [politicians] go on pushing us to the edge, if they want to dehumanise us further, we will come to Athens and burn them all.”

With the rhetoric at such levels, prime minister Alexis Tsipras’s leftist-led administration has suddenly found itself on the defensive. Faced with a series of demonstrations--fishermen and stockbreeders will join blockades on Thursday when public and private sector workers also take to the streets--analysts say any honeymoon period Tsipras may once have enjoyed is over.

On Wednesday, convoys of tractors in Thessaly, the nation’s breadbasket, blocked the road at Tempi, effectively cutting the country’s main north-south highway. Hundreds more lined the seafront in Thessaloniki while, further north, police were forced to fire rounds of tear gas at protestors barricading Evangelos Apostolou, the agriculture minister, in an administrative building as fierce clashes erupted in Komotini.

Their fury is focused on proposed pension and tax measures, the latest in a battery of reforms set as the price of the debt-stricken nation receiving a third, €86bn, bailout last summer.

For farmers, the draft policies are tantamount to the kiss of death. “We are going for all out confrontation,” said the prominent unionist Yannis Vangos, warning that by Friday roadblocks would be erected across a large swath of the county. “It seems we can’t see eye to eye at all. Things are out of control. It’s not just one thing we have to negotiate.”

Six years into Athens’ economic crisis, even more Greeks claim they have been pushed to the point where they can no longer survive the rigours of austerity. With an unprecedented 1.2 million people unemployed--more than 25% of the population--many have been pauperised by the biting effects of keeping bankruptcy at bay.

Pensioners, whose incomes have been reduced 12 times at the behest the EU and International Monetary Zone, this week also upped the ante taking to the streets.

Creditors argue that at 17% of GDP, Greece’s pension system is Europe’s costliest and to great degree the generator of its fiscal dysfunction. But those who stand to be affected by the overhaul counter the changes go too far.

For farmers, the reforms will not only raise social security contributions from 6.5% to 27%, but double income tax payments from 13% to 26%, eradicating more than three quarters of their annual earnings.

“There are some I know who are forced to live on pensions of €360 (£275) a month,” says Vergos. He was among hundreds of farmers and stockbreeders who attempted to storm the Greek parliament upon hearing of the proposed plans in November. “It is as if with these latest measures they want us to give up.”

The 35-year-old added that he was already struggling to raise his three children because of cuts in benefits. “And to think I voted for Tsipras and his [Syriza] party,” he lamented. “To think I thought they were our big hope. Now I don’t want to see them in front of me.”

The unrest has illuminated Syriza’s abrupt slide in popularity. Almost a year to the day after they assumed power, sending tremors through Europe’s conservative establishment, the once unyielding anti-austerity leftists have come up against what every government has confronted since the onset of Greece’s great economic meltdown: the difficulty of placating the bodies keeping the country afloat while avoiding the political cost of doing so.

The government has been put on the back foot as criticism has also mounted over revelations of Syriza executives hiring relatives and friends against its own pledge to do away with cronyism in the bloated public sector.

With unions announcing a general strike on 4 February, the prospect of social upheaval has reignited concerns over Greece’s ability to remain in the single currency. Amid fears that lenders, led by the hardline International Monetary Fund (IMF), will ask for further retrenchment--following discovery of a €1.8bn fiscal gap in the budget this year--an iteration of the Grexit crisis cannot be ruled out. Negotiations between Athens and its creditors begin in the coming days.

[swamp-wanderer]

Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos visited his Israeli counterpart Moshe Ya'alon at the Defense Ministry.

Leftist government does not mean an end to militarism and imperialism.

[swamp-wanderer]

Where has Syriza taken Greece? Which are the forces at play in the restructuring of the Greek economy? And what are the conditions of its radical critique? What follows is a discussion of Cognord’s text “Changing of the Guards”, including TH’s critical remarks on that text, Cognord’s reply to these remarks and Ady Amatia’s comments on the questions raised in this discussion. TH and Ady Adamantia are members of Sic collective.

[lonmcq]

After Rejecting Bailout Plan, Greece's Economic Future Is 'Invisible'

After Rejecting Bailout Plan, Greece’s Economic Future Is ‘Invisible’

by Chris Arnold

The Greek word for no is oxi, and across Athens and the Greek Islands on Sunday, it was everywhere: on posters, spray-painted on walls and old cars.

And it was also on ballots: Greek voters voted oxi Sunday in a historic referendum over the country’s economic future.

The Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras called the surprise vote to ask his country whether they would accept a…

View On WordPress

[1lmw]

After Rejecting Bailout Plan, Greece's Economic Future Is 'Invisible'

After Rejecting Bailout Plan, Greece’s Economic Future Is ‘Invisible’

by Chris Arnold

The Greek word for no is oxi, and across Athens and the Greek Islands on Sunday, it was everywhere: on posters, spray-painted on walls and old cars.

And it was also on ballots: Greek voters voted oxi Sunday in a historic referendum over the country’s economic future.

The Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras called the surprise vote to ask his country whether they would accept a…

View On WordPress

[swamp-wanderer]

Dr. Varoufakis (Dr. V. from now on) is another self-proclaimed Marxist among the ranks of SYRIZA –although an erratic one according to his confession, in the sense that he has replaced Marx’ s social abstract labour theory of value with a humanist theory of the value of labour. His ambition is to enlist Bloomberg and New York Times journalists, Tory MPs, humanist financiers, SYRIZA activists in Greece and subversive elements in Zagreb to the cause of “saving capitalism from itself”, i.e. to the cause of harnessing neoliberal “animal spirits”. His false dilemma of capitalisme ou barbarie (barbarity in the political context of the EU meaning right-wing nationalism and neo-nazism) aims at the preservation and democratization of the Eurozone and the European Central Bank (ECB). Making use of the imagery of Matrix, this hipster economist-cum-social liberal aspired to provide the European populations the “red pill” that takes you deep down the rabbit hole to the desert of the real, i.e. the “truth” about life, society and the “quantification of labour”. Based on such knowledge, “people” could start a struggle to reform the policies of European capitalist institutions. After becoming a Finance Minister and a few days of a rhetorical end to the bailouts and harsh austerity politics that had caused “depression, cynicism, disintegration and misanthropy”, Dr. V. soon realized that if he and his party were to be accepted in the high echelons of the political personnel of European capitalism they had to put an end to their aspirations and their war of words against the EU official policy. The moment ECB tightened the terms of liquidity provision to Greece, the initial optimism of the new state bureaucracy, to which we had referred at the beginning of our previous text, quickly evaporated. Nobody enters the palaces of capital scot-free.

60 days older and deeper in debt.

Ta Paidia Tis Galarias