Um professor de relações internacionais da Universidade do Pireu, cujo primeiro nome é evocativamente Aristóteles, e certamente evocando o título da biografia de Henry Adams, chamou o recente episódio de meia-volta do primeiro ministro grego de "a educação de Alexis Tsipras", o que talvez seja enganoso, pois esquerdistas convencidos jamais se dão por vencidos, e jamais aprendem qualquer coisa.
Temos como exemplo a nossa dirigente, inepta, incompetente, teimosa, e que até agora não reconheceu todos os gigantescos equívocos cometidos, todas as bobagens perpetradas, e que se recusa ainda assim a fazer um mea culpa. Não tem educação, stricto et lato sensi, ou seja, nunca aprendeu nada e pretende continuar não aprendendo. Cabeça dura...
O primeiro-ministro grego também, e como a brasileira, vai deixar o seu país muito pior do que antes, mas se recusa a admitir simples verdades.
Apresenta as propostas europeias como sendo um assalto à mão armada, o dinheiro ou a vida, dizendo que tem de aceitar dar o dinheiro para manter a vida, o que é escandalosamente desonesto: os gregos, para ter mais dinheiro europeu, terão de aceitar algumas reformas, que já deveriam ter feito por conta própria, para seu próprio benefício, não para beneficiar credores, que de resto são todos institucionais, não banqueiros malvados, como quer fazer acreditar uma imprensa debiloide (como Carta Capital, por exemplo). Exatamente como no Brasil, onde as reformas precisam ser feitas em benefício do próprio Brasil, não pelos mercados ou pelos capitalistas estrangeiros.
A França, talvez pensando no seu próprio caso, queria flexibilizar, e passar mais dinheiro para os gregos sem muitas condicionalidades. É muito fácil jogar com o dinheiro dos outros, no caso com o dos alemães, que não aceitaram a tramoia (e por que deveriam fazê-lo?; os gregos que se convençam que não podem mais viver com o dinheiro dos outros, como todos os socialistas gostam de fazer).
Em conclusão, temos uma comédia de erros no caso da Grécia, mas os principais trapalhões e embusteiros são os próprios gregos. Um dia vão ter de aprender, e o povo grego também.
Exatamente como no Brasil. Mas o custo é enorme ter esquerdistas ignorantes no poder...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
In Greece, defiance dissipates into capitulation
By Ylan Q. Mui and Anthony Faiola
The Washington Post, 11/07/2015
Thousands of people flooded the square outside Parliament, draping themselves in blue-and-white flags to celebrate the country’s sweeping rejection of the tough austerity measures demanded by its European creditors, which Greece’s fiery young leader had likened to “blackmail.”
But by Friday, the euphoria had faded as Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s vows to stand up to Europe caved to the harsh realization that the birthplace of democracy stood just 48 hours away from financial ruin — and Greeks were poised to swallow what amounted to the same dose of austerity they had refused in a vote Sunday.
“Each one of us shall be confronted with his stature and his history. Between a bad choice and a catastrophic one, we are forced to opt for the first one,” Tsipras said in a speech before his party’s lawmakers, according to local media. “It is as if one asks you for your money or your life.”
In the wee hours of Saturday morning, the Greek Parliament backed a last-ditch plea to creditors for more than 50 billion euros in emergency funding that could carry the country through the next three years. European officials in Brussels also planned to pore over the proposal Saturday afternoon. Approval from the 19-member euro zone’s finance ministers would open the door to restarting formal negotiations that had broken down in the run-up to the referendum.
Securing the bailout money could pave the way for shuttered banks to reopen, return some semblance of normalcy to beleaguered citizens and affirm this Mediterranean nation’s identity as an integral part of Europe. But it almost would amount to an acknowledgment that while the austerity Tsipras disdained may be painful — and may deepen Greece’s financial crisis — leaving the common euro currency would be worse.
“The revolutionary moment has fizzled,” said Mark Medish, who served as a top official in the Treasury Department and the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton. “In effect, the no vote would be turning into a yes.”
But members of the far-left block of Tsipras’ ruling Syriza party signaled they were unhappy with the deal. Panagiotis Lafazanis, who heads the radical block and sits in Tsipras’s cabinet, characterized it as a departure from party philosophy. He and seven other Syriza members abstained from voting. Seven of the party’s lawmakers skipped the vote altogether, and two rejected the proposal. The insurgency could result in a political shakeup once negotiations with Europe are over.
The bailout “doesn’t give answers to the country’s problems or a positive destination,” Lafazanis told Greek media.
How Greece went from victory to economy-destroying defeat
In return for a bailout, Tsipras offered to undertake a massive restructuring of the national budget that has eluded his predecessors but that analysts say may be unavoidable if Greece is to stabilize its foundering economy. The package of spending cuts and tax increases is estimated to total 12 billion to 13 billion euros — even more than previous Greek proposals had offered. It includes abolishing key tax breaks for islands that are popular tourist destinations, phasing out a subsidy for poor pensioners and privatizing sprawling state industries.
“This could be called the education of Alexis Tsipras,” said Aristotle Tziampiris, associate professor of international relations at the University of Piraeus. “The overwhelming majority of the Greek people were united in fact in their desire to stay in the euro zone.”
The apparent capitulation by Greece, though, still needed the backing of its creditors, some of whom remained decidedly unamused by the antics in Athens.
Greece’s troika of lenders — the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund — discussed Greece’s request for a bailout in a conference call Friday afternoon.
A commitment of fresh money could open the door for the ECB to lift its cap on emergency aid for Greece’s banks, which have been shut for two weeks. The central bank will likely discuss the matter Monday, according to the Reuters news agency.
French officials, who sent advisers to help Greece craft its proposal, lobbied for leniency, with President François Hollande describing the offer as “serious and credible.”
But Germany, the largest creditor nation, is likely to be a decisive voice, and hard questions were still being asked in Berlin. German officials were calling for signs of follow-through by the Greeks, and the strong endorsement of the proposal by the Greek Parliament might help.
This is the third bailout that Athens has asked for in five years. Greece had sought an extension of its previous program, but now it is to start a wholly new one.
“The situation of the expired old program does not exist anymore,” German government spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters in Berlin. “Therefore, what we need is a new, multi-year program which in its requirements and commitments by far exceeds what was discussed at the end of June.”
Yet there seemed to be a slight opening by the Germans on the thorny but pivotal issue of easing Greece’s crippling debt, even if slightly. German Finance Ministry spokesman Martin Jäger said a major debt-slashing was out of the question. But he left open the possibility of a debt restructuring that eases Greece’s terms, saying the intent was not to “significantly reduce the cash value of the debt.”
A commitment by Greece’s lenders to address its debt could sweeten the deal for Athens. As Friday’s debate over the bailout stretched into Saturday morning, Tsipras held out that potential as a crucial victory.
“I hope we are nearing the end of a battle,” he said before Parliament. “Sooner or later, this seed of dignity and democracy will bear fruit for other Europeans.”
But for some Greeks — primarily from the prime minister’s own party — there remained only one solution: to leave Europe and its austerity regime behind.
A small contingent of the bailout’s most ardent opponents gathered Friday night in Syntagma Square in front of Parliament. Petro Vaios, 20, handed out leaflets and carried a sign on his backpack that read, “No bailouts, old or new.”
The protest was a mere shadow of the throngs that filled the streets after last Sunday’s referendum. Vaios said he knew he was fighting for a lost cause.
“After five years of austerity, we now know for sure that the European way has not led us anywhere,” he said. “If we follow the same path, it’s like committing suicide.”
When asked how he felt about Tsipras, the leader who moved from open resistance to desperation in the space of a week, Vaios only smiled and replied, “It’s a tricky question.”
Stephanie Kirchner in Berlin contributed to this report.
A
Grécia foi à bancarrota não porque, como dizem os entusiastas do novo governo
eleito, pagou taxas de juros "usurárias" sobre sua dívida, mas sim porque se
endividou despreocupadamente para que seus políticos pudessem gastar como se
não houvesse amanhã.
A
economia grega, que já estava mal, paralisou-se completamente desde a chegada
do novo governo ao poder no início de 2015.
Sempre
que um país passa por problemas econômicos, surge um grupo de economistas
dizendo que tudo pode ser corrigido caso o governo simplesmente desvalorize a
moeda — isto é, deprecie sua taxa de câmbio.
MOUNT PARNITHA, Greece — The gods lived at Mount Olympus, but the gamblers live at a casino on Mount Parnitha, and, lately, Greek leaders have been praying to strike it big here.
The Greek government owns an unusual half-stake in this mountaintop casino, the second-largest in the country, and Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has vowed that selling it — along with dozens of other properties, buildings and companies across the country — will be a top priority in last-ditch efforts to save the Greek economy.
But with time ticking on Greece’s bailout, and the country’s future on the shared euro currency ever more in question, the odds are stacked against him.
Greece owns large swaths of sectors like gambling that in other countries are in private hands. The arrangement helped derail Greece’s finances in the first place, with powerful unions bidding up workers’ salaries to unsustainable levels and money leaking to politically connected contractors. Now, few investors want to bet their money on these properties in the middle of what Samaras has called “our version of the Great Depression.” And it is not politically attractive to sell off Greece’s crown jewels at fire-sale prices.
If Greek leaders don’t hit it lucky, though, international officials are more ready than ever to pull the plug on the bailout that is keeping Greece from collapse. The consequences would be even worse than the recession that by year’s end is likely to shrink the economy by more than a fifth of its 2008 heights.
“We do all we can to bring the country back on its feet, and they do all they can so we can fail,” Samaras recently said, railing against unnamed foreign leaders who he said were jeopardizing Greece’s economy.
Without the bailout, Greece would probably be forced out of the 17-nation euro zone. European leaders would then themselves be gambling that they could contain the subsequent panic that would strike far larger economies such as Spain and Italy. If they lost, a global recession might return. If they won, they would have a smaller but potentially stronger currency union.
Shortly after his inauguration as prime minister in June, Samaras swore to speedily privatize some big targets: the country’s money-losing train network, the power company and a prime seaside stretch of land. But even some of his allies worry that he is setting himself up for public failure.
“There’s just no market,” said Konstantinos Kollias, who was the head of a previous privatization effort during the boom years under a government led by Samaras’s center-right New Democracy Party.
“Many of these companies have many problems,” he said. “They’ve had poor management for many years.”
That poor management helped stretch open Greece’s budget deficit to 13.6 percent of the size of its economy in 2009, setting off
the crisis, and it continues to hamper the country’s recovery. Some state-owned companies are profitable, but many are money-losers. Taking them off public balance sheets would help stabilize Greece’s finances, its creditors say, and encouraging private investment would help its economy grow in the long run. International officials have said that speedy privatization would be one of the biggest steps Greece could take.
the crisis, and it continues to hamper the country’s recovery. Some state-owned companies are profitable, but many are money-losers. Taking them off public balance sheets would help stabilize Greece’s finances, its creditors say, and encouraging private investment would help its economy grow in the long run. International officials have said that speedy privatization would be one of the biggest steps Greece could take.
A daunting task
From the Regency Casino Mount Parnes, whose views sweep across Athens down to the glowing-blue Mediterranean, the scale of Greece’s tasks remains daunting. Some state-owned companies, such as the national train company, are billions of dollars in debt and have bled money for years. Others, such as the state lottery and betting company, are profitable but are trading on the stock market for rock-bottom prices and would not raise much money. Still others, such as the casino, make money but may face millions of dollars in fines from the European Union on charges that the government illegally gave them aid.
And they all have robust public workers unions that aren’t afraid to strike when they feel threatened. The casino was shut down for 32 days this spring while its union fought for better terms in its contract.
“The situation now is almost out of control,” said Costas Mitropoulos, who resigned last month from his post heading Greece’s privatization efforts, saying that the new government had undermined his work by making unrealistic promises. “Right now, there’s no market. It’s not a question of price.”
Proceeds from privatization have been wildly below targets. The country was initially supposed to reap $61.5 billion by 2015, a goal picked by Greece’s creditors not because it was an estimate but because it was the number needed to bring down Greece’s debt to politically acceptable levels. Privatization was expected to bring in $4.4 billion this year alone. Instead, it has made only $369 million, and Mitropoulos says that delays from the long election season mean that nothing else will be sold this year. Pushing back, the prime minister’s office has sworn to pull off a string of privatizations within months.
Predictions wrong
The privatization office, on the top floor of a tired building in central Athens, is filled with reminders of the obstacles facing Greece’s leaders. In the waiting room, a flat-screen television plays a marketing video on an endless loop showing “Reputation says: Investing in Greece? Disaster” and “Reputation says: ‘Who will work?’ Greeks are ‘expensive’ and ‘lazy’ ” before trying to persuade viewers that those assertions are false.
“Right now, all predictions have proven wrong. And in such an environment, you can’t privatize everything,” Mitropoulos said.
He thought it would take 30 years to develop the land that has been flagged for sale, not eight years as foreseen by the internationally agreed privatization plans. That land is 4 percent of Greek territory.
And some companies are politically sensitive. Some Greeks say the Public Power Corp., which supplies the bulk of electricity to the country and owns the entire grid, should be kept in public control to ensure low prices for consumers. Its union of 21,000 workers has been militant about refusing to implement tax increases and has threatened to strike — leading to power outages — if the government moves ahead with plans to sell its 51 percent stake.
Whether a sale would actually raise money is another question. Some analysts say the company has almost a quarter more employees than it needs. Their median pay is a third more than that of Greece’s private sector by some estimates, and the company loses money most quarters. Its stock price is down 93 percent from 2007 highs.
“For us, people and their needs are more important than the needs of the market,” said Nikos Fotopoulos, the head of the power company employees union.
For now, Samaras is trying desperately to implement enough measures to persuade Greece’s troika of international creditors — the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and theEuropean Central Bank — that they should give his country an extra two years to meet its marks. Whether he will get it — and whether his ministers are committed to making the full level of cuts that the troika has demanded — is uncertain.
The decision about whether to issue another installment of the bailout money will likely come in September, and Germany, the biggest contributor to the program, is already signaling its reluctance to give the green light.
From the casino atop Mount Parnitha, where whirring roulette tables and chirping slot machines bring a Vegas touch to the Athens panorama, Greek leaders are betting they’ll hit the jackpot.
Elinda Labropoulou contributed to this report.