Greek Mythology: The Real Story of the European Debt Crisis

[marmar]

from YES! Magazine:




Greek Mythology: The Real Story of the European Debt Crisis
Why what you’re hearing about the European debt crisis—and how to fix it—is wrong.

by Walden Bello
posted Jul 20, 2010


Cafés are full in Athens, and droves of tourists still visit the Parthenon and go island-hopping in the fabled Aegean. But beneath the summery surface, there is confusion, anger, and despair as this country plunges into its worst economic crisis in decades.

The global media has presented Greece, tiny Greece, as the epicenter of the second stage of the global financial crisis, much as it portrayed Wall Street as ground zero of the first stage.

Yet there is an interesting difference in the narratives surrounding these two episodes.

Narratives in Conflict

The unregulated activities of financial institutions, which created ever more complex instruments to magically multiply money, created the Wall Street crash that morphed into the global financial crisis.

With Greece, however, the popular narrative goes this way: This country piled up an unsustainable debt load to build a welfare state it could not afford, and is now the spendthrift that must tighten its belt. Brussels, Berlin, and the banks are the dour Puritans exacting penance from the Mediterranean hedonists for living beyond their means and committing the sin of pride in hosting the costly 2004 Olympics.

This penance comes in the form of a European Union-International Monetary Fund program that will increase the country’s value-added tax to 23 percent, raise the retirement age to 65 for both men and women, make deep cuts in pensions and public sector wages, and eliminate practices promoting job security. The ostensible aim of the exercise is to radically slim down the welfare state and get the spoiled Greeks to live within their means. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/greek-mythology-the-real-story-of-the-european-debt-crisis