Prof George Irvin is a man I have a lot of time for. He's written about the Greek financial crisis today, saying:
Was this necessary? Clearly not; the EU could have borrowed money at 3% and lent it to Greece at the same rate or lower. Similarly, the harsh conditionality imposed was not merely unnecessary but, as many have argued, deeply counter-productive. Greece did not need to cut social spending then, nor does it today. Rather, it needs to raise productivity, particularly in the export sector. This can best be done by means of new investment.
A sensible EU bailout plan would direct cheap funds at productive expansion rather than insisting on punitive contraction. Indeed, Greece needs concessional lending (at less than 3%) –which could be financed by means of a new E-bond, a Tobin tax, un-sterilised quantitative easing, or some combination of these and other instruments.
In short, the real lesson of the Greek debacle is not that that peripheral countries should exit the eurozone (although that is now a distinct possibility); rather, it is that the current situation results from the increasingly rightward drift of Europe and the short-sightedness of our political class. Sadly, most European social-democrats have been complicit in this deplorable state of affairs.
Spot on George - which also makes clear that too many social democrats have lost their way.
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A sensible bail-out package was never envisaged. It’s not the citizens in the periphery who are being bailed out, it’s the banks in the core.
Bang on Brianovitch. Today’s blog at http://sturdyblog.wordpress.com/ tells it how it is for the Greek people – and this is what will come to pass here unless we’re very, very fortunate.
This is the answer you will reach with clear logical thinking but are the bankers who control IMF and ECB, working to a different agenda? A loan with a very low interest rate could be created and the interest charges could be rebated as a form of reward when their economy rebuilds and reaches certain agreed targets.
What happened to my comment????
It failed moderation
I don’t recall why
But I’m sure there was good reason
Probably failing to add to debate
I don’t see much debate in the other comments….they all seem to share the same point of view.
And it is frankly surprising that someone that has a Tax Justice blog puts so little emphasis in the way the Greeks have are running their taxation system.
I have repeatedly pointed out that Greece has to collect tax due
This blog is a longitudinal publication of almost 7,000 posts. I am not obliged to repeat all previous 6,900 odd entires each time I mention a subject
Equally, the comments policy makes clear I have the last word on moderation
And if I think a comment does not add to debate or is boringly neoliberal, then I delete it
I respect your blog and your right to delete some comments, but what I see is that on Greece there is no debate.