The Slog: For those of you who missed this morning’s jolly jape about Draghi,
Lagarde, van Rompuy and Barroso, unless the Forces of Darkness have
taken it down, it should still reside here. What
I really didn’t count on was that news during the day would illustrate
beyond any reasonable doubt that, when it comes to eurocrats, the
correlation between criminality and incompetence is as near as damnit
100%.
Thus – to add to the earlier four most wanted criminals – we now have their four biggest f**k-ups.
GREECE: Two bailout agreements, total aid of 240 billion euros, and one bondholder haircut later….Greek public debt remains very nearly as high as it was in 2010 – the year in which Greece sought ‘rescue’ by the Troika. The numbers are, 2010 Public debt – 31o.3 billion euro; 2013 Public debt – 309.4 billion euro.
This bears some thinking about. All the hardship, all the lost growth, all the closed tourism businesses, and all the socio-political agony the Greeks have been through. A quarter of a trillion euros expended on the exercise. All for a gain of just one tiny, weffer-thin 0.9 billion euros.
Thus – to add to the earlier four most wanted criminals – we now have their four biggest f**k-ups.
GREECE: Two bailout agreements, total aid of 240 billion euros, and one bondholder haircut later….Greek public debt remains very nearly as high as it was in 2010 – the year in which Greece sought ‘rescue’ by the Troika. The numbers are, 2010 Public debt – 31o.3 billion euro; 2013 Public debt – 309.4 billion euro.
This bears some thinking about. All the hardship, all the lost growth, all the closed tourism businesses, and all the socio-political agony the Greeks have been through. A quarter of a trillion euros expended on the exercise. All for a gain of just one tiny, weffer-thin 0.9 billion euros.