And this is just the beginning.
Dr. Doom has the “global picture” of course, complete with the dysfunction of national accounts and the figures for our surprisingly resilient banking system that’s fighting back, but, closer to the ground, great swaths of the people of Greece already see their society unraveling and their families being pushed into poverty by a government of collaborators, who additionally have the audacity of posing as “saviors.”
We are in the middle of a genocide that Dr. Doom describes in cold “econometric” terms, our European “partners” mull about because of its potential “impact” of the Eurozone, and junior economists have already begun studying as part of their national disaster textbook case seminar supplement. Few, if any, of all these “interested parties” gives a hoot about the real, living, breathing victims of the slaughter as it is customarily done when “things happen.”
There isn’t one single Greek today who believes “the light at the end of the tunnel” exists.
Recent polling discovered that 80 percent of the public believes the worst has not even arrived yet.
Nevertheless, these same Greeks only recently behaved in direct disproportion to their increasing hardship and desperation by giving the Papandreou regime a borderline advantage in local elections. Instead of sending Papandreou and his confederates to where they belong (the Tartarus) the Greek voter either abstained -- thus strengthening the regime in power -- or refused to decisively defeat his executioners. Sociologists will continue to argue this huge “Stockholm syndrome” incident for years.
But, really, we are beyond the medicinal effect of “democratic elections” and the tin assurances of the local politicos that an exit from the crisis is within grasp “if we all put our shoulder to the wheel.”
Greece has simply lost for good its credibility with the “markets” and, as a nation that exists on borrowed money and produces next to nothing, has little, if any, recourse to creditors with the established conclusion that Greek bonds are, and shall remain, junk.
At this dark hour, Hellas is without leaders.
The Papandreou regime -- divided onto itself, amateur, wasteful, cacophonous, and just a grotesque piece off the old corrupt block -- has little wherewithal beyond its enormous slash-and-burn tactics that are eliminating the livelihood of millions of Greeks without gaining one iota in terms of easing the country’s debt crisis.
Papandreou & Co. has already squandered our one single hope of actually blackmailing our “partners” over terms that could give us a bit more breathing space: the Greek crisis remains quite “systemically relevant” to the Eurozone and the stability of its money and as such it is a “loaded gun.” But the Pap regime, time and again, has been caught with its breeches down.
So, by the time we get to Woodstock -- if we get to Woodstock -- we will be most probably decimated beyond recognition.
Greece will be a nation of paupers, drawn and quartered by its own “government,” open to foreign direct intervention and without much ability to defend herself.
Already, signs of the “systemic” stoppage abound: large sectors of the government-controlled administrative system are falling idle, either because of the lack of funds or the headlong departure of government workers into the deceptive safe haven of retirement; the armed forces experience critical materiel shortages and personnel hemorrhage; significant parts of the domestic market have been stifled into premature death by brutal taxation and the collapse of demand without any hope of revival; and the “pillars” of the Greek economy, tourism and mercantile marine, seriously under-perform either because of the lack of customers (tourism) or the reluctance of owners to continue bringing their money into this wobbly country (shipping). Even worse, a quiet but steady flow of emigration of younger, brighter Greeks is rapidly gathering speed.
To remember the song:
We are stardust, we are golden,
We are billion year old carbon,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.
But how?