A senior Bank of England official has said that Greece will never be able to get rid of its enormous debt mountain, since the "political pain" that its leaders would suffer would make it impossible.
Alex Brazier said that Greece could, in theory, run a surplus large enough to shrink its debt mountain, which currently runs to 176pc of GDP, after bail-outs worth €245bn. However, he said no elected government would be able to do so, suggesting that Greece will be left with an enormous debt overhang for some time. Figures from the Bank of Greece released on Monday showed the country had fallen back into deficit over the first two months of the year. Greece was in the red by €684m January and February, compared to a €139m surplus it registered over the same period last year. Mr Brazier is a senior figure at the Bank, as its executive director for financial stability strategy and risk and a member of the Financial Policy Committee, which tries to ensure financial stability in the UK. I would like all of those who make the claims about "whining" Greeks and all these very 'humanitarian' comments to imagine what it is like to have 40-50% of their incomes lost due to adjustment policies. Fat chance these 'humanitarians' will and - what is worse - many of the people here making these comments are most likely Greeks themselves. Apart from that, it is true that Greece has been tainted by corruption, malfunctioning and ailing institutions, and a mentality of extremely low trust - all these making a vicious circle. But ask yourselves this (at least those of you who do bother to read and whose open mind is not narrower in reality than the margins of a school notebook): This has been going on for decades if not centuries, any wonder why it came to a boil now, the debt especially? It is because of the whole banking crisis and more specifically banks lending Greece in the good-ol' years and now basically getting away with it in all of EU... "One can surely agree with the logical and legal demand for Greece to pay its debt, however, one thing I can't understand is: What continual logical sequence is connecting faulty banking system, obviously wrong political decisions leading to fiscal imbalance and bankruptcy, on the one side, with massive public cuts affecting only simple people, on the other side, in other words: "Why punish simple people for bankers and politicians wrongdoings?!" Why are people making wrong decisions put automatically out of the equation and not took under consideration?"
No comments:
Post a Comment