Monday, April 26, 2010

Life and debt

It has been a difficult few days here in Greece with a very good friend of mine suddenly becoming ill and being taken to hospital for an operation. The treatment was excellent despite the desperate shortage of staff and the signs on the wall saying, 'the doctor who is treating you has not been paid for three months'. Such is the Greek financial crisis.

Today, with the IMF bailout being agreed, I read this endorsement of economic orthodoxy:
Over the weekend, French and German leaders turned the screws on Greece, insisting that the €45bn international bailout would not go ahead without further austerity measures to slash the country's ballooning budget deficit.
And I couldn't help thinking that a people are about to be sacrificed in order to save a currency.

2 comments:

Anton Deque said...

A currency designed for one big happy family. In euroland there was to be no Germany or Greece or anyone else, but Europe pure and simple. How this was to be worked out was never to my knowledge explained. There were, of course detailed economic forecasts and plans including "rigourous" rules on deficits and trade balances and so on and on. These never worked nor can work without loss of sovereignty, independence and nationhood. This Greece is learning. The rest tomorrow.

Will said...

""THE richest people in Britain have seen a record boom in wealth over the past year. Their fortunes have soared by 30% even though much of the UK is struggling to recover from recession and the near-collapse of the banking system.

It is the largest rise in wealth since the list was first published 21 years ago. Much of the increase is a result of the rebound in stock markets and property values after the government injected hundreds of billions of pounds into banks and the wider economy to stave off collapse.

...

Philip Beresford, compiler of the list, said: “The rich have come through the recession with flying colours. The stock market is up, the hedge funds are coining it. The rich are doing very nicely.

“The rest of the country is going to have to face public spending cuts, but it has little effect on the rich because they don’t consume public services.” "

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/specials/rich_list/article7107299.ece