Papandreous’s Agenda

Papandreou’s Agenda

Papandreou has made every Greek citizen in Greece a slave of the international bankers and for what? For loans from the World Bank, ECB and IMF.

Why did Papandreou take these loans? Papandreou is a socialist which means he thinks “the state” can look after the people better than the people can look after themselves.

The main problem in Greece is that the state employs more people than it can afford, it pays the people that work for the state more than the state can afford and it gives benefits/pensions to state employees which are so big the state cannot afford.

Greece over the years, through the dishonesty of it’s politicians, has made promises to the electorate that the state can in no way honour. The state has effectively said to people we can pay you a 100Euro a month pension for example except the state has nowhere near the money to pay for these obligations.

The crisis Greece is in now is directly related to these promises which the country cannot keep. ie the government can no longer afford to pay it’s day to day expenses let alone pay the pensions of the people in the future.

Papandreou’s solution to the crisis has NOT been to address the core issue which is that the country needs to slash public spending immediately to balance the books.

Papanderou has decided that balancing the books can wait. As of July 2011, two years after the intial problem was identified, the Papandreou government has not sacked a single government worker.

How is it possible for Papandreou to continue without sacking government employees immediately?

The Greek government bailout by the Troika.

Papandreou thinks he is doing Greece a favour by keeping unproductive government workers in a job. He thinks by negotiating loans with the IMF, the World Bank and the EU that he is helping the Greek economy by keeping these poeple in work.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Greece is in trouble, as I have stated, mainly because it spends more then it takes in by quite some margin, some 2 billions Euros a month and rising (despite increasing taxes).

Which means Greece can also not afford to pay the interest payments on it’s debt. And this is what has really caused the problem.

So given that Greece’s main problem is that it cannot afford the debt it has now, it is obvious to everyone that deals with money that increasing an already unmanagable debt load is most definitely not the solution.

Okay, so we know why Papandreou has taken these loans, he gains popularity by keeping government workers in jobs a little bit longer but why has the World Bank and IMF got involved?

What do they gain by Greece taking these loans?

Well it seems to come down to the privatisations. As I have covered before, privitisations of government run companies is not going to solve Greece’s problems. Greece’s state owned companies lose around 2.4 billion Euros a year for the top 11 leading loosers. And the rail company accounts for 1 billion of this. So for arguments sake lets assume that in total, including the profitbale companies like the power company DEI, the betting firm OPAP, the post office ELTA that the total losses mount up to 3 billion Euro a year, that means the state owned companies loose on average per month 250million Euros.

Chump change compared to the governments losses so to say privitisations are the answer for Greece is clearly not the answer. And also, don’t forget that the state owned companies actually provide a service that the people want and a service that they can actually identify.

So going back to the IMF and World Bank insisting on privitisation in return for the loans, they are clearly not asking for privitisations to help Greece deal with the debt load. They are simply insiting on privatisations to allow the international banks to come into Greece and earn huge commissions and bonuses for negotiating the sales of these assets.

The truth could not be more obvious.

The fact that international consortiums that buy these monopolies will be free to jack up the prices and make a tidy sum themsleves is a bonus for the Troika.

So to recap. Papandreou massively increased the debt of Greece so government workers can keep their jobs a bit longer. And all this is on condition that he sells Greece’s most productive assets, (which the government does not even own incidentally, they belong to the people), to foreigners so banks can earn huge commissions and international corporations can charge more for the same services.

So basically Pandreou has sold Greece to foreigners so he can remain popular and possibly hold onto his seat for another 5 years.

But wait a minute, I have been saying that these government workers can keep their jobs. This may be true, for now.

The fact still remains, that the Greek government has a massive deficit, it spends massively more than it takes in in taxes, and the problem is getting worse. These loans do not address this fact at all. Of course there are supposed to be conditions attached to the loans but the biggest issue in the press is the privitiastions which suggests to me that this is also the main concern of the IMF, World Bank and ECB.

So in short, the ECB, the World Bank and the IMF do not appear to be too concerned that the government deficit appears to be out of control as long as the privitisations go ahead. At the end of the day they have approved a second bail out for Greece this year even though the government deficit has been steadily increasing.

What does this mean? It means that the government is going to have to slash it’s workforce at some point in the future. If the Troika has to delay this day of reckoning with bail outs in order to get their hands on the Greek assets then that is something they are prepared to do.

So bascially Papandreou is selling out his country for short term, politicial benefit. In the long run, no person in Greece benefits from this massively increased debt, people in Greece are only worse off by this increased debt.

These bankers are not stupid. They know that Greece has structural problems that it is unlikely to fix unless it is forced to by a money shortage. But instead of simply losing the money they have lent to Greece they can see a way by which they can use the situation to their benefit by seizing control of the assets of the people of Greece.

The only thing that the international bankers required was a puppet that they could manipulate to serve their own needs, not ask to many questions and most of all someone who puts their interests above those of the people he is supposed to be representing. That fact that the money they are giving Greece now is pandering to Papandreou’s socialist ideals is a bonus for Papandreou and the socialist movement.

In summary;

Papandreou has sold out the Greek people for short term political gain in return for the long term detriment of the Greek people.

The title of the article is “Papandreou’s Agenda”. The loans Greece is getting now is probably reinforcing Papandreou’s belief that socailism is the future. After all, international bankers are supporting his goals of sustaining the size of government in Greece. As I have written in another article. I think Papandreou has let his politicial ideoligies get in the way of the facts and to get in the way of what is best for Greek people. He would not be the first socialist leaning politician to fall into this trap. Stalin & Hoxha to name 2.

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