Austerity
becomes, finally, all Greek to the Greeks. Only Troika can do this,
because it depresses the hearts other tears cannot reach.
(with heartfelt homage to the CDP Heineken campaign)
The Slog: A firm based in Tiptree UK – which manufactures and supplies body
armour for military personnel and police forces across the world – has
secured a deal worth more than £1.2million to supply the Greek police
with bullet-proof vests. VestGuard UK’s commercial director Oliver
Lincoln said the company was “absolutely thrilled” to have completed the
order with the Greek police, at a time when the equipment “will really
make a difference to the country”.
Not (on the surface of it) the most tactful of things to say there Ollie, but I think you were referring to our
country, not Greece. I wish Oliver Lincoln all luck in his quest to
find credit insurance for the deal: he’s going to need it. In the
meantime, I see no signs of any difference in Greece, beyond further
slide down a Helter-Troika into the cesspool of globalist madness.
The cradle of democracy itself has, sadly, been converted into a
crèche, and occupied by a small number of mad political babies. The new
‘more fair’ taxation system about to be introduced will, once it has
been passed by the Greek Parliament, call upon all employees, pensioners
and self-employed to pay more tax in advance. The
self-employed are being asked to stump up a ball-crunching 80%. Nothing
like freeing up some working capital to get the economy moving, that’s
what I say.
But if those Troika demands seem both harsh and deranged, at least
its economic forecasts about Greece’s prospects are as consistent as
ever: Athens-based think tank IOBE reckons that the Greek economy will
undergo a much deeper contraction than that predicted by the
Troikanauts. It says Greek GDP will shrink by around 5% this year,
rather more than the IMF and EC forecasts of 4.2%. This is also worse
than the Greek central bank’s prediction of a 4.6% collapse. But just to
cheer up the overall picture of rose-garden perfection offered us by
Antonis Samaras last week, Greek public sector workers took to the
streets to protest looming job cuts.
I think all this adds up to more evidence that The Slog’s mantra
remains a truism: ‘watch not what they say, but rather what they do’. So
things are calming down and the economy’s going to grow in 2014….and in
recognition of that, we want four-fifths of your tax upfront, and £1.2m
worth of bulletproof vests please, Ithangyooo.
I think the Italian business paper Il Sole 24 Ore had the
best take on the Greek situation, when it referred to Greece being like
the canary in the coal mine: whenever Athens seems about to utter a
high-pitched treble yell and fall off its perch, there is rampant fear
that the cause is a leak of poisonous gas that will surely wipe out the
entire eurozone. Whereas the truth really is, had Samaras any instincts
in his beaky nose – or Venizelos any room in his 105% fat-content body
to accommodate a spine – the Greek government would’ve told its lenders
to engage in narcissistic anal sex years ago. But as Antonis is keen on
sparkly new trains, and Evangelos on gravy, that simply isn’t going to
happen.
So instead, we must watch the new Troika deal unravel
unfold. It seems that, under the diktat, Athens is required to bring an
omnibus bill before parliament to put into law the commitments it has
made to the troika – in particular the civil service mobility scheme .
The Greek CSMS is rather like the open bank reconciliation project:
when the OBR says ‘open’ it means ‘prise open your bank account and nick
the cash’. When the CSMS says ‘mobility’, it means the mobility
involved in civil servants being thrown from windows, and loudly
commanded, “Fly!”. This may well be an omnibus bill that turns out to be
ominous for everyone. Especially passers-by.
But in the most unintentionally hilarious moment this year to date in
the eurozone Death by a Thousand Troiks Cuts saga, last night the
Eurogroup FinMins declared with satisfaction that the Greek rescue
programme “is broadly on track”. What the rest of us would like to know
is where the track is headed – Nirvana or Auschwitz – because the
numbers don’t tumble in the sort of way I associate with the ‘on track’
thing: on the whole in fact, they look more like evidence suggesting
wheels and trains parting company.
Some of these numbers should quickly illustrate my point. Every Greek
citizen owes the international lenders €27,370. The amount – despite
billions in bailouts – is going up. Every last one of these was hailed
as The Solution. Maybe we should start calling them Hailouts. Maybe the
Bailins to come should be called Loveins. It really doesn’t matter,
because it’s all bollocks anyway.
Now read this and weep: since the austerity screws started being
drilled into every Greek forehead and shop door in early 2010, average
Hellenic salaries have slumped by very nearly a quarter. Even
worse, the rate of impoverishment is accelerating: from Q1 2012 to Q1
2013, they fell just over 10%. I need someone – a monetarist
Friedmanite, or an MEP maybe – to explain to me here why, in a world
where rigged and flatlining markets are too busy eating themselves to
“decide”, there is a snowball in hell’s chance of half the Greek
population avoiding starvation – let alone ‘resuming growth’ in 2014.
Who is going to provide the seed capital, given Draghi has emptied
Europe of it? Who’s going to do the consuming? Where are the export
markets, given that even the Germans are now feeling the pinch? Are the
Chinese about to develop a craving for Tahini-free hummus and dipping
olive oil? The scenario is nightmare-meets-fantasy through the medium of
an early Dali painting.
What I need is some help from Dan Hannan. He knows everything is
going to be alright in neocon, debt-guzzling, “booming” America, and I
can only assume he’s more optimistic about Greece now, because virtuous
and sound Friedmanomics are being applied to those who have been
foolishly obeying the siren calls of Reaganomics. And even though Reagan
and Friedman were supposed to be on the same side while practising
diametrically opposed policies, young Daniel always has the neat quote
and the bon mot to save the day. So come on, Danny Boy: stop drivelling about UK Primaries, and lend a hand re this one.
Think of this as an open invitation to guest-blog here…from he who
bites your ankles daily, that demmed elusive Iannis Slogolopoulus.
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