Greece, the Troika, and the New York Times
By William K. Black
Bloomington, MN: December 29, 2014
As I have explained in prior articles, there is an excellent chance that the Troika’s infliction of austerity on the eurozone’s periphery could, as with the austerity inflicted under the Washington Consensus continue to produce such long-term rolling recessions that it creates a political dynamic that discredits such economic malpractice and brings to power leaders elected on the promise that they will adopt economically literate policies. The first case of this in the eurozone could be Greece. (Hollande won office on a platform of opposing inflicting austerity on France, but purged his government of those that most strongly opposed austerity and implemented policies that moved increasingly toward austerity. The French economy stagnated and Hollande’s approval ratings are dismal.)
Greece’s coalition government led by Prime Minister Antonis Samaras failed, in multiple tries, to garner enough support to continue to rule. The result will be national elections on January 25, 2015. The results of the election are uncertain, but the leader in the polls is the Syriza party led by Alexis Tsipras, which is running on an anti-austerity platform.
The New York Times’ web version has four recent articles on Greece dated December 27-29, 2014. I’ll begin with the only one that is not a complete embarrassment, Suzanne Daley’s December 29 article titled “Greek Patience with Austerity Nears Its Limit.” While the journalist often does not select the article title, as I will show Daley either chose or inspired the title. Her title signals the central problem with the article. “Patience” has nothing to do with the issue and is most assuredly not a virtue in this context. The title suggests that if the Greeks were simply more German, more patient, all would be well. The reality is that the Greek people, as with their counterparts in much of the eurozone, have been far too patient with the economic equivalent of bleeding the patient (austerity). All other factors held constant, the longer austerity continues the slower the recovery and the greater the misery.
As Bill Mitchell always emphasizes, governments choose the level of unemployment – and the Troika and the Greek leaders who succumbed to its extortion have chosen to create catastrophic rates of unemployment in Greece that continue a full six years after the peak of the crisis. Greece is suffering from Great Depression levels of unemployment and lost GDP. Indeed, Greece suffered relatively less from the Great Depression, which reduced per capita GDP (peak-to-trough by approximately 6%). In the case of the Great Depression, Greece was able to return to pre-Depression GDP levels within four years. The troika, and the Greek leaders who gave to the troika’s threats condemned Greece to a crisis that is far more severe and far longer than was the Great Depression. No people worthy of being a Nation would be “patient” with seeing such horrors gratuitously inflicted on their fellow countrymen. They would rise up and put a stop to such depraved policies.
in full: http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/12/greece-troika-new-york-times.html#more-8942
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