Watch the video below, it's not in some remote third-world country, but in Europe:
Greece, as other European countries, has been left bankrupt from the most recent financial crisis that started from the US, spread over to Europe and touched Asia.
I am sure financial experts will be able to explain all the complex mechanisms that caused this crisis in details; in my simple way to look at things I can tell you the reason in my opinion: the so called "free economy" and "free markets" basically have meant no rules and allowance for greedy and ruthless bankers to do anything in the name of profit. Those people have become rich thanks to multi-million bonuses paid yearly despite having been the cause of this utter disaster.
It was only a matter of time before somebody would be left with the short stick, like that game where everyone dances around chairs and there is one chair less than the number of players; when the music stops someone must be left standing...well the music has stopped.
Greece is only the first, probably followed by others, such as Spain, Portugal and Italy...if one has must really see the bright side, I would say that at least this time the suffering will be at home, not miles away in some far away third-world African or South-American country...we will not be watching it in the evening news while having dinner with our family, but on the streets where we live. Probably, only this would make us realize things must change, no more room for the utter chaos we have been made to live.
I am disgusted at the words used by government and IMF when describing the measures that countries like Greece have to implement to get the funds needed to repay their debts. Words such as "austerity", meaning that the governments will be required to cut salaries, cut pensions, cut social services, healthcare, while increasing taxes...in summary people that had nothing to do with the criminal acts that caused the crisis, will be required to pay more to have less to repay the damages left over by ruthless, reckless, greedy corporations and banks that have only gained by their wrongdoings and once there was nothing else to exploit left the mess behind them.
Who will gain from that? The same corporations who have created all of this. Governments will be forced to open markets to private sectors, everything will be privatized, from water supply, energy, to healthcare. The bad boys will make billions, while the rest of us will have to put up with "austerity".
It is sickening to see history repeating and repeating once again. Read "I.O.U.: The story of debt - Noreena Hertz", it's all in there.
It is probably not going to get better anytime soon. Krugman has a nice post on his blog highlighting something that everyone else seems to be ignoring: wages of EU periphery nations need to fall something like 20-30 percent relative to wages in Germany to restore competitiveness. That means years and years of suffering...
ReplyDeletehttp://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/17/et-tu-wolfgang