A Greek Tragedy!

(A Very Personal Viewpoint)

As EU Ministers mull over what financial (crumbs) to throw off the EU table to the Greek people, I cannot but sigh for what might have been.

I have covered this 'Greek Tragedy' in previous comments (review my earlier blogs) where I look in detail at the mechanics of Greek debt, but just to recap and summarize:

The Greek people were 'sold a pup' when a bailout was agreed.

To simplify a series of complex arrangements (all of which I cover in detail elsewhere) it was not the Greek people who were bailed out but U.S. institutions, the German and other European Governments which had underwritten bank loans to Greece.

The objective was never to bail out the Greek people – who have all been press-ganged to pay for the banking and political incompetence of bureaucrats and financiers.

So why did the Greek government capitulate?   Why did it not give the 'two fingers up' to Brussels, leave the Euro and plot a recovery course free of debt enslavement? At least, under such conditions, as Argentina and Iceland have shown, you can succeed, if you have enough determination.

Don't believe a word of what they tell you about the IMF lending billions to Greece with nothing to show in return.

This money went (in the main) to bail out the foreign banks and institutions on the understanding that the Greek government would implement disasterous government cutbacks (in the Civil Service, local government, hospitals, schools and across all sectors of the public service) to 'pay' for the IMF/European Union 'loans' and so-called bailout.

It's both a scandal and a tragedy.

If there was any semblance of integrity in the mainstream Western European and U. S. media (which there is not) it would be crying 'foul' in support of the Greek people and exhorting citizens to pressure their respective U.S. and European politicians and governments to end this charade and 'freeze' all repayments until the Greek economy is financially able to support debt restructuring and sensible non-extortionate repayment of outstanding loans.

History will be left to explain to future Greek generations as to why it's own politicians agreed payment restructuring which has devastated the public sector infrastructures, nursery, primary, secondary schools, universities, hospitals, social care, agriculture, central and local government employment, pensions, services for the very young, refugees, those least able to care for themselves, students and the elderly.

It's both an outrage and a scandal of epic proportions – yet nobody is writing about it in these terms.

I see disgraceful comments about 'lazy Greeks'; 'too much time spent in leisure and not enough in productivity'; the 'incompetence' and 'coruption' of the Greeks and past government administrations - as if Greece is the birthplace of both - rather than consider where we would all be today without the Greeks and their many sacrifices over the millennia.

On the contrary, the rest of Europe would do well to learn about health and lifestyle from Greece and it's people prior to it joining the European Monetary Union, rather than vice versa.

One of the great problems of our time is the obsession with money, political power and influence to the extent that we often loose touch with 'the fundamental basics.'

In my short lifetime I am only too aware how a single bullet, a bomb, aeroplanes used as de facto bombs, coup d'etats, civil wars, disease and famine can turn princes into paupers, presidents into corpses, send millions fleeing for their lives with little more than the clothes they possess, thanking their god (if they have one) that they and their family are (at the very least) still alive. And only yesterday such people were professionals, businessmen, individuals of wealth, influence and power in their home countries. Now they are just refugees, discarded, unwelcome and unloved, shunned by politicians and described as 'swarms' like locusts 'overwhelming' us with their pleas for sanctuary in Christendom, fleeing as many are, from problems others have created for them.

Who would 'volunteer' to become a refugee?; or an economic migrant in search of hope and a better life?

We need to re-focus on what are really important beyond the financial priority of draining Greece, in a vampire-like manner, of every Euro it possesses - and making diseased beggars of it's ordinary jobless and homeless citizens in the process.

Greek history will never forgive those politicians and bankers who cut the umbilical cord and left millions in penury and to die for want of a dignified response to what it a personal tragedy for every ordinary Greek citizen, who, in the main, share no collective responsibility for the machinations of a few.

©Patrick Emek, May 2016