{"id":12041,"date":"2011-11-13T12:16:35","date_gmt":"2011-11-13T17:16:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=12041"},"modified":"2018-01-15T18:07:18","modified_gmt":"2018-01-15T23:07:18","slug":"the-report-from-greece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/11\/13\/the-report-from-greece\/","title":{"rendered":"The report from Greece"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Petrou and Stavroula Logothettis<\/a> survey the Greek debt crisis in a report that Maclean’s<\/em> cheekily headlines “Acropolis Now”:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWe are finished as a nation,\u201d says Marko Gjini, a 39-year-old unemployed construction worker in Athens. \u201cThe country has been sold off. We have no say in anything anymore. Greece is owned by the Germans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like many Greeks these days, Gjini is bitter and despondent because of his country\u2019s financial mess, and the austerity measures that have been imposed in an effort to contain it. His wife, Aleka, a public hospital nurse, has seen her income drop from 1,200 euros a month to 800 euros. Now, facing more taxes and cuts to public expenditures, the family expects to have a net monthly income of less than 500 euros. Marko and Aleka are investing whatever money they can toward English lessons for their twin eight-year-old boys in the hope that they might have a better future somewhere else. \u201cLet the government fall,\u201d says Gjini, \u201c[German Chancellor Angela] Merkel is the boss now anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

For Vaso Gildizi, a Greek freelance writer, events in Cannes were \u201ca national humiliation for the country.\u201d The Greek prime minister was scolded like a schoolboy and sent home. The incident didn\u2019t sit well with many Greeks who were already sour on the bailout deal and the euro itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re bankrupt,\u201d says 44-year-old Vasilia Paneli, owner of Bliss, a trendy caf\u00e9 a short walk from Syntagma Square and the parliament in Athens. \u201cWe know it. The EU knows it. And yet we continue this Greek tragedy. A referendum would at least give us a voice, a chance to speak up for our future.\u201d Paneli was unmoved by French and German threats that a referendum on the bailout deal would have meant a vote on whether to remain in the eurozone. She\u2019d rather Greece leave it. \u201cIt\u2019s self-serving,\u201d she says. \u201cI say let\u2019s go back to the drachma.\u201d<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

William Antholis, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank, likens flirting with a return to the drachma to \u201cthreatening suicide to avoid a lynching.\u201d Greece is in for a painful few years whatever happens, he said in an interview with Maclean\u2019s<\/em>. The austerity measures are going to bite. But leaving the euro, he says, would be disastrous. The costs could include a run on Greek banks, as people sought to withdraw euros before they were changed to drachmas. Some banks would probably collapse. Greece would likely default on its debts, and would be unable to pay pensions and salaries. Some sectors of the economy built on export might benefit from a new, devalued currency, but at the expense of much heavier blows elsewhere.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Petrou and Stavroula Logothettis survey the Greek debt crisis in a report that Maclean’s cheekily headlines “Acropolis Now”: \u201cWe are finished as a nation,\u201d says Marko Gjini, a 39-year-old unemployed construction worker in Athens. \u201cThe country has been sold off. We have no say in anything anymore. Greece is owned by the Germans.\u201d Like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,62,1118,1526],"tags":[71,337],"class_list":["post-12041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-europe","category-germany","category-greece","tag-debt","tag-eu"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-38d","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12041"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41808,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12041\/revisions\/41808"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}