“Welcome to hell!” Stavros, my cousin’s husband, did not mince words as we embraced, surrounded by the swirling foot traffic at Athen’s central bus station. Stavros had years ago disavowed the Hellenic tradition of hyperbolic self-pity and I stood amused at his relapse, ignorant of the pre-Christian vision of hell that lacked fire, brimstone, or demons. The preferred damnation of the ancient Greek world was eternal frustration, tedium, repetition, and pointlessness. Enter the Greek economic crisis, which for over two years has approximated such infernal punishments. The Greek government, to secure loans and prevent their country’s bankruptcy and catastrophic exit from the single European currency, was faced with the Sisyphean task of shrinking the bloated Greek public sector and cutting salaries and pensions while simultaneously increasing tax revenue in a country whose citizens are infamous for their flagrant disdain towards central authority.
Of all this I had been made aware before arriving in Athens, from mainstream media sources exogenous to Greece. However, I was in the capital to learn from the ‘people’—from my relatives and their friends, from taxi drivers and corner storeowners—about the Greeks’ perspective on the crisis, on which the foreign press had been somewhat silent. Eleni, my cousin, sat in the front passenger seat of a grey Opel stuck in a snarl of hatchbacks and mopeds, while Stavros drove. My arrival a few weeks ago coincided with a taxi driver, bus driver, and metro operator strike, which amplified the numbers of private vehicles on the cities already congested roads—24 delightful rush hours, back-to-back. Traffic barely broke a stroller’s pace while my hosts turned in their seats, enthusiastically launching into an analysis of their country’s situation for the benefit of their Greek-American visitor. Obviously, the local interpretation of the economic crisis would differ from those of the Financial Times or the English language version of Der Spiegel, but as to the degree, I was surprised.
For my first meal in Greece, we dined in the anarchist neighborhood of Exarheia; but there were no burning storefronts or hoodie-clad layabouts. Instead, there were suspiciously student-like individuals sitting at coffee shops surrounding the main graffiti-clad square sipping coffee and tooling around on their MacBooks. My relatives, after explaining their own precarious financial situation, presented the context to their falling fortunes. They perceived the crisis as a gigantic social engineering experiment of unprecedented proportions disguised as a spontaneous and unavoidable calamity. Not wanting to point out the Hellenic tendency to see everything through a Greek-centric lens—more than 95 percent of the nightly news is devoted to local issues, reflecting the parochial tastes of its audience—I played the credulous listener while my hosts vented their frustrations.
According to Eleni and Stavros, it was unknown how developed countries would react to the introduction, overnight, of economic uncertainty, political instability, eroded purchasing power, and chronic unemployment on a massive scale; to find out, Greece was made prostrate. Details as to why anyone would do such a thing were omitted, save for ominous declaration that the country was to be a warning sign. To embrace anything except the ruthlessly efficient economic logic made universal by globalization was to meet a similar fate.
Although the euro zone crisis does highlight obvious hypocrisies in neo-liberal dogma, such as the questionable merits of making taxpayers responsible for the failings of unregulated aspects of the finance industry, to assume that the suffering of millions of people was caused by the machinations of a small cabal of powerful rational actors seemed to be a dressing-up of a more mundane reality—crises are precipitated by mass short-sightedness, not the Machiavellian skill of a covert few. Nevertheless, my pedestrian explanation was overshadowed as talk shifted between the Illuminati and the H.A.R.P.P. project, which used targeted earthquakes and controlled weather phenomenon to get recalcitrant governments in line. The blame laid at the feet of impossible culprits could go unmentioned if not for the prevalence of such views—sometimes less extreme, sometimes more—among other people I spoke with and what they say about Greeks’ worldview as a whole.
The initial exposure to the views of the Greek branch of my family surprised me. They are not paranoid village-dwellers; these are well-educated, well-traveled residents of a relatively cosmopolitan capitol city of 3 million and representative of the large Greek middle class. Their conspiratorial take on events indicates how powerless and anxious many Greeks feel, especially when—since the rise of rampant clientism in the 80s—maintaining a high standard of political awareness had not been asked of the current generation of working adults. While times were good, the satiated middle-class turned a blind eye to metastasizing corruption, often explained away as the invented accusations of foreign imperialists meant to discredit the dominant political party, PASOK, and its nepotistic, baloney-fisted leader, Andreas Papandreou. If Greeks are to be blamed for anything, it’s the human tendency to permit ruling-class excesses to go unchallenged as long as a rising tide is lifting all boats.
My cousin Eleni is a beneficiary of the pacifying Greek nanny state and had recently retired from the numbing drudgery of the public sector. To fulfill the Troika’s austerity demands and clear the payroll of excess civil servants, Eleni was allowed to retire early and still collect a partial pension. As an example of the daily uncertainty that many in Greece have to endure, Parliament has yet to determine at what rate these special pensions will be set and when exactly the delayed-onset pension payments will begin. In the meantime, her family has been living off of dwindling savings and rents from inherited property. One proposed austerity measure, a tax focused on second homes, will further erode the couple’s net income and does not account for whether the property is rented or not (most of their property is vacant, including the one bedroom apartment graciously afforded to your humble narrator). The thought that Greek hospitality norms would have them indefinitely footing my bill made me uneasy.
At the height of the Troika’s austerity push, before the first round of inconclusive elections, new legislation was being proposed daily, making it impossible to untangle the haphazard web of pronouncements. Many new laws seemed to depend on an individual civil servant’s understanding of statute, which amounted to institutionalized chaos and an ever-increasing potential for corruption (yes, there still was untapped potential). In this atmosphere, businesses and families could not budget for the coming weeks or months. It is no surprise that during the first round of elections, voters rejected the entrenched parties of PASOK and New Democracy (ND)—the same parties that had already bumbled the delicate task of economic restructuring, enraged the international community through persistent and flagrant bureaucratic inertia, and whose fortunes were—‘coincidentally’—not greatly impacted by the crisis. That they politically survived this long is a tribute to the unbroken continuity of their rule since the mid-1970s.
PASOK and ND—the same people whose profligacy spent the country into the ground—claim to be the thin edge keeping Greece from Euro zone exit (termed Grexit in policy shorthand) and its attendant calamities, and the results of Sunday’s election confirm the Greek electorate’s reluctant acceptance of this supposed fact. Much hand-wringing came out of the anti-bailout left’s gains during the first election but a media barrage harangued a frightened and insecure public into believing that the second election was a pseudo-referendum on staying in the euro zone; voting for anyone other than the old guard would be interpreted by the international community as declaration of a desire to exit.
Nevertheless, even now that a governing coalition has formed, it is just the beginning of Greece’s economic odyssey. The decisive moment is not as neat and tidy as a cliffhanger election, but will play out over a 100-day window bequeathed to Greece during which the country has to make a good faith effort and implement enough cuts, freezes, and hikes to satisfy the cynical German-dominated Troika. The narrow margin by which pro-bailout New Democracy won over anti-bailout Syriza highlights the divided nature of the Greek voting public, which even after the media’s fear blitz still craves punishing the old guard, even at the risk of economic calamity. These circumstances will precipitate a series of governments built like card houses, toppling at the slightest breeze and hamstrung in their ability to push through 150,000 job cuts by 2015 and a €11.7 billion reduction in government spending by 2013. This would be asking a lot of a stable and trusted governing elite.
During my first week in Athens, I had only been exposed the segment of Greek society who had something tangible to lose after Grexit. To get a different perspective on the crisis than that of my older, established relatives, I thought it best to speak with some younger Greeks—those who have lived with poor employment prospects for most of their entire adult lives. Responses to a Facebook announcement had friends volunteering to connect me with their acquaintances in Athens and it was not long before I found myself sipping whiskey and chatting with Yorgos, Ellie, and Clairie on the Friday night before the June 17 election.
“Is it unusual to speak about politics at a party,” I asked, accustomed to the American tendency to avoid such delicate subjects. Yorgos, a painter who for the first half of the crisis decided he was better off in an Indonesian slum renting an apartment for €25 per month and polishing his craft, told me that for the last two and a half years it has been impossible to avoid discussing politics, even in the most abbreviated of social encounters. Foremost on peoples’ lips was talk of jobs and money, followed by worries over immigration and crime, which were the primary concerns of the older generation. In this case, parties were no different from a trip to the dentist or a visit from a plumber. Ellie, the party’s DJ, fresh off the decks, told me how apocalyptic talk was overshadowing even the most idyllic moments—an island picnic, a walk past the Acropolis at sunset, or even christenings had become steeped in discussions of politicians, scandals, and interpretive conspiratorial debate meant to contextualize what to many seemed to be a irreversible spiral of economic and moral decline.
“Although the euro zone crisis does highlight obvious hypocrisies in neo-liberal dogma, such as the questionable merits of making taxpayers responsible for the failings of unregulated aspects of the finance industry, to assume that the suffering of millions of people was caused by the machinations of a small cabal of powerful rational actors seemed to be a dressing-up of a more mundane reality—crises are precipitated by mass short-sightedness, not the Machiavellian skill of a covert few.” I have never seen so many euphamisms in one sentence.
Coming from a farming background it was an accepted fact that if crops failed in more than one farm at the same time it was not regarded as the fault of the indivual farmer.
Is the author not aware that when it comes to politics and money nothing happens by chance.
So if there is a economic collapse in several countries at the same time then the only explanation is sabotage.
“So if there is a economic collapse in several countries at the same time then the only explanation is sabotage.”
You might want to go back to the farm, where processes are more linear… Or just buy a dictionary & look up ‘sabotage’. Correlation does not imply causation – this is basic critical thinking
When you take into account the fact that PIIGS countries suffered economic collapse at the same time coinciding with the introduction of the €uro and also the fact that when it comes to money and politics nothing happens by chance it is obvious that the collapse has to be due to sabotage.
There are other factors such as flooding these countries with unecessary and unaffordable debt and a clear lack of any control over the lending institutions that would also indicate a deliberate sabotaging of these economies.
Nobody forced the Greeks to take on unaffordable piles of debt. The Greeks invited Goldman Sachs over to show them how it’s done. The main problem with Greece is the Greek people. When you spend more than you earn you go bankrupt. When you refuse to pay taxes you can’t afford to have services. It’s really not that complicated.
I’ve always believed that Greece did not belong in the EU; it’s basically a Third World country. When Sulla captured Athens back in, I think, 86 B.C.E., the Athenians begged him to spare the city as a reward for their great services to civilization. Sulla replied that the Athenians were no longer the people of Pericles, but a degenerate race. Not much has changed since Sulla’s day.
The elephant in the room. So many EU countries being able to pay their debts before the introduction of the €uro and so many unable to pay their debts after the introduction of the €uro.
Nobody forced the Greeks to take on unaffordable debt? the same with the Irish, the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Italians, The French, the Americans, all at the same time – very strange indeed?
So the Greeks are an inferior breed?
I’m not Greek but I studied Greek at School (it was all greek to me) as one of the great civilisations.
Of course, from the political correctness point of view it’s a big no-no to say that any people or nation has degenerated. But the Greeks of today have nothing to do with the Greeks of antiquity, beyond the fact that they live in the same territory and speak a somewhat similar tongue. The Greeks of antiquity created one of the great civilizations in human history. But by Roman times they no longer possessed that spark of genius. That’s why Sulla spoke as he did. The Greeks of today are a further 2,000 years removed from that time when Hellas was the most important place on earth.
Yup.
In reading this article what came across to me was that it was reporting facts and figures but not the human element of the Greek Crisis. It is not enough to give personal and detailed information about two or three individuals to adequately explain what is in the heart and mind of the average Greek citizen. Nor is it enough to give tidbits of historical data to adequately explain what is going on in Greece today. It is very dangerous to try to sterotype an entire ethnic class and Greeks are just as guilty of this as anyone. To get to the heart of the matter requires that you go beyond the left brain analytical mentality and go to the right brain emotional mentality. Human beings are complex organisms whose actions usually result from feelings and not from analysis. You have to feel in order to understand.
What I also find is usually lacking in any analysis of “The Greek Crisis” is its context to the global financial situation. If all this is true of the Greek people and their politicians and I must admit that it seems it is – then why are so many other countries in a similar situation?
As an international relations graduate, who coincidentally felt the urge to get in touch with her roots after college, I feel much less qualified to analyze the situation from a political and economical perspective. However, I can say that I feel the author has not quite grasped the problem or its roots.
Yes!
The world is full of scams and the intruduction of the €uro provided the opportunity for one of the most audacious.
Stating the obvious, lending institutions with the connivance of politicians were allowed to destroy their businesses, lending money they only had on paper by creative accounting to other lending institutions, governments, property speculators, buying dodgy investment products from one another and whatever.
When they ran out of the little actual cash they had taxpayers were conned into thinking they were the cause of the problem and were therefore liable to compensate the banks with taxpayers’ money for money the banks never had in the first place. This is like the person slipping on a wet floor after spilling water on the floor themselves and then claiming compensation.
It was a very simple scam and it has worked so far with Governments giving up their gold and public assets to these conmen bankers.
And now that they can’t milk the PIIGS taxpayers any more they have turned on Germany.
I am a Canadian citizen and I have been living and working in Greece for the past 14 years and I can assure you that the writer has accurately explained the heart and mind of the average Greek citizen.
I totally agree with this writer’s experience. Couldn’t have said it better myself, except that I wouldn’t speak so lightly on HAARP.
On another note, I am quite surprised with most of the comments particularly with regard to this conspiracy concept of coincidence. My advice is to stop searching for mysterious reasons as to why this debt crisis is happening in so many countries at the same time. It is no coincidence at all. It is just simply that time has caught up with those countries who have been involved in poor management of their finances. Greece has lived above and beyond its means. Worst of all, it has boasted about how it has gotten away with it all this time. As a (proud) Greek of the diaspora myself, I have experienced first hand when Grecians have visited my country and ridiculed our laws and obedience to them. To be Greek, should not mean that you are above the law. I love Greece, and what it means to be Greek but cannot hide my disappointment of the current custodians of my motherland.
Let it be known, this is not an economic or political crisis. This is a social or spiritual crisis which has been caused by a general moral decline in Greek society. A dog eat dog society. Where merit and integrity is not of value but of which family you belong to. This phenomena is not restricted to Greece, but you could say Greece does it well. So until Greece decides to do some internal reflection and stop blaming everyone else for their woes, they will never learn from their mistakes and move forward in or out of the Euro.
I stand by what I said above. It cannot be just a coincidence that so many lending institutions would get into trouble at exactly the same time and then look for the tax-payer to bail them out.
I would agree with you on moral decay. That also contributed to the PIIGS being ripe for picking.
Edward, the reason why the lending institutions have faced trouble at the same time is simply due to the interconnectedness of the global financial system. Like the domino effect. The problem got to a point where it could be no longer contained. Coupled with increased transparency which lead to new measures and a realization of downgrades and therefore higher borrowing costs and then bust!. All these lending institutions had exposure to each other. There is no conspiracy in this.
Taxpayers unfortunately had to foot the bill. It is the quickest method to address this problem. As we know, speed of addressing these sort of problems is paramount. If we waited for the culprits to pay up, we would have already seen the global financial meltdown. They are just buying time so as to try and work out how to get out of this mess.
I think the lesson out of this is that we need to learn about ‘responsibility’. What message so we want to send to our younger generations about how we deal with our problems? We don’t teach our children that it is everyone else’s fault. We try to instill a sense of responsibility in them, for them to learn from their mistakes and move forward. Unfortunately, I have not seen this in Greece.
Nearly every town and village in Ireland has what are called “ghost estates”, houses and apartments that no one wants and will more than like have to be demolished.
At the height of the boom the lending institutions were ringing people up offering loans for everything under the sun – giving 110% loans for houses that were clearly not worth half the asking price. It was like the Klondyke gold rush.
This was the market people were forced to enter if they wanted a roof over their heads. Not only was there no control over the lending market but there was also no control over the labour market. The labour market also went from boom to bust.
The natives who could not afford to work for next to nothing were quickly replaced by an unending stream of young foreign labour willing to work for next to nothing.
So if you tell me that all this was the fault of the tax-payer and the taxpayer should now bailout the banks I can only surmise that you work for a bank