Judging from the behavior of Mr. Samaras et.al. the answer is “not very long.” The answer was the same for Mr. Samaras’s predecessors also, both the hapless Papandreou and the “technocrat” Papademos. All three quickly acquired a perception of reality that was in discordance with the view of the overwhelming majority of Greeks and the rest of the world.
Lies played on.
The latest round of self-applause from the Greek government comes after yet another “victory” – the decision by our European “partners” to release another loan “tranche” worth 49.1bn euros; and the forced “haircut” of the Greek banks so that Greece’s overlords in Berlin and Brussels would agree to allow the borrowed cash to flow.
The “triumph” of the haircut has been shown, convincingly and exhaustively, to be yet another tragic absurdity associated with Greece’s slow strangulation by “friends and partners.”
As for the largest chunk of this “bailout” money, Mr. Samaras will be sinking it into a banking system that has already reached the morgue; the “real economy” will have to wait some more for any trickles of liquidity.
Nevertheless, the Greek administration sped, yet again, to announce that releasing the money will further stimulate (?) the country’s failed economy and push it “to return to a sustainable growth path.” [Laughter in the audience, loud applause].
This bragging reminded me again the whole collection of previous tragic absurdities blurted out by the domestic “saviors” of Hellas.
Who could forget those singsongy statements by one who shall remain anonymous about Greece “returning to the markets in 2012” or Papandreou’s infamous and persistent repetition that Greece “commits” herself to “paying back every last penny” to her creditors? (As a footnote, Papandreou had gleefully admitted earlier that the ‘bailout’ package was the largest such loan in modern economic history, thus becoming a preposterous example of a prime minister expressing publicly his satisfaction for his country going bust and receiving such enormous, unprecedented and genocidal, ‘bailout’ help).
Who can forget Mr. Venizelos, then finance minister and presently leader of the quickly disappearing Pasok “socialists,” that Greece had secured “the bottom of the barrel” and thus she could contemplate the future with the confidence of a “victor”?
Who can forget, above all, Mr. Samaras’s super-fiery opposition to the infamous “First Memorandum” with the Troika and his trench warfare with the Germans until the time, that is, he executed a spectacular somersault to become the ardent musketeer in defense of the German-instigated Greek “death by austerity”?
This time around, Mr. Samaras took one more decisive step into the “bailout” dreamland by announcing also that talk of a Greek exit from the Eurozone has now been put to rest for good.
All these lies have been challenging our patience and intellect for far too long.
We would like, therefore, for Mr. Samaras, or any other “relevant minister,” to answer with facts and figures the following questions:
How will Greece create a minimum one million jobs in the foreseeable future in order to put some of the present 1.4 million unemployed back to work? – Especially when the Greek public sector is expected by the lenders to begin shedding tens of thousands of “jobs” immediately and adding to the legions of the already unemployed?
What economic infrastructure, and what entrepreneurship, will sustain generating primary annual surpluses of 10pc or more (a vision deemed unattainable by economists) via high quality output that will be absorbed eagerly by foreign importers?
With the economy having shrunk already by over 25pc, and with the domestic market completely out of cash, where will we find the astronomical funds that would be required to re-ignite sustained growth?
With constantly growing segments of the population crashing down onto standards of living last seen in the 1960s, thanks to the austerity plague agreed upon and fomented with religious fanaticism by Mr. Samaras and his immediate predecessors, where we will find the authority to build the moral and personal strength required to mobilize millions of pauperized citizens?
How would we convince investors to land and put their money into a country that enjoys the lowest esteem worldwide alongside some of the utter disaster stories in parts of Asia and Africa?
Finally, and most importantly for the number crunchers, all this slaughter of the Greeks, all this sacrifice under the German “partner” knife, and all the bottomless suffering of all but the most filthy rich, won’t affect the size of the sovereign debt in any appreciable manner; from 200pc of GDP today, the debt is hardly expected to budge below 125-130pc of GDP by 2020, as Greece keeps overspending with borrowed funds again and well into the future.
The lies must end by popular action – or we won’t be around that much longer to absorb them.