Thousands of civil servants marched through the Greek capital and the second largest city of Thessaloniki on Wednesday, as a two-day nationwide strike against planned job cuts shut down all public services.
Schools and courts were closed and hospitals were functioning with reduced staff. Trains were halted for four hours, and journalists joined in with a three-hour work stoppage, pulling news broadcasts off the air.
The walkouts are the first widespread strike action after the summer period and aim to put pressure on the coalition government to repeal unpopular austerity measures required as part of the country's international bailout. Officials have vowed not to back down....
The country has been depending on bailout loans from the International Monetary Fund and other European countries since May 2010. In return, it has implemented a series of strict austerity measures to reform its economy.
They have included deep cuts to state salaries and pensions and repeated rounds of tax hikes, measures which many blame for prolonging a deep recession that is now in its sixth year. Unemployment is above 27 percent, the highest in the European Union, while it reaches nearly 60 percent for those under the age of 25.
The Huffington Post
Greece's Public Sector Shuts Down For 2-Day Strike As Thousands Of Civil Servants Protest Austerity Cuts
Elena Becatoros
4 comments:
What they need to stop is use of the euro under it's current management.
They've got everything right except the causality.
I weep for these people.
Don't know about sin, but the wages for ignorance & confusion are completely unnecessary suffering.
If you can organize ... but not to reality ... then you better start RE-organizing? ASAP?
Before taking the extreme step of exiting the euro the Greek government could start a process of "resistance to austerity" by issuing a parallel currency to pay for key public expenditures now being curtailed by imposition of the eurozone-led Troika.
Or decide to keep paying pensions at before austerity levels by issuing marketable tax credits for pensioners. These credits would cost the government nothing in terms of euros. They would be exhangeable for euros in the market. Firms with taxes due would be eager to buy them back from pensioners in real euros - probably with a discount versus par value - in order to fulfill their fiscal obligations.
Even better - the government could decide to get direct financing from state-owned or interventioned banks and then dare the EU to "punish" Greece for this act of defiance.
The eurocrats wouldn't be able to react in an effective manner, short of expelling Greece from the euro, something they will never dare to do because this would likely precipitate the unraveling of the cherished (by the elites) single currency project.
Before resistance is possible, however, the greek electorate must replace the current government. The present leaders are defending the interests of the eurozone instead of their own country's. Until the situation evolves and matures for that step to be taken Greece will continue to undergo the brutal shrinkage of her economy, sacrificed at the altar of the euro project.
know any Greeks able & willing to run with that ball, Jose Guilherme?
That's a good question.
I don't know if Syriza, the likely alternative to the present austerity policies, would prove willing - and have the required technical ability - to run that ball.
But they'd better be, because if they don't play it - and play it well, with the enlightened intention to score many points for their country and against the eurocrats - they will disappoint their electorate and watch over (in total impotence) another round of decline in the battered Greek economy.
The Euro-crats are not exactly altruistic fellows, ready to benignly listen to the demands of a newly-elected government. They are imbued with a very practical, if fanatical, mission: to submit Greece and the rest of the periphery to the requirements of the euro.
This will in all likelihood mean decades of recession (no, I'm not exagerating, just have a look at the savage budget measures for the next decades prescribed in the so-called "fiscal compact"), mass emigration, double-digit unemployment, generalized poverty and concentration of wealth and income in a ever more tiny, subservient local elite.
To run an effective fight against this mad plan of destruction (mad from the POV of most of the population, that is) a lot of technical ability is required.
The strength of the Troika lies mainly in their control of the currency. Greece lacks euros and therefore has to submit. Yet there are means available for recapturing at least part of the monetary sovereignty lost with the euro. Tax credits, parallel currencies, direct government financing from local banks, you name it. Either Syriza will prove able to find out about those means and then use them in self-defence - or Greece will be toast for many, many decades to come,
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