Contributed to hellasfrappe by skeptomenos-gr
On the eve of the October elections in 2009, the following two paragraphs were published in one of our reports which angered many people.We were accused of endorsing chaos and of being destructive in character because we had the courage to tell it like it is. They even called us sci-fi scriptwriters, charged us of wanting to undermine the interests of Greece and they even said we did not want to embrace the change that was coming. Two little paragraphs that caused a surge of accusations follow:
"Allow us to speak bluntly; the elections of October 4th, 2009 are not jeopardized by the country's economic policies, and/or position, and certainly have nothing to do with improving the state of our daily lives. As always, Greece's economic policy will be determined by Europe which will in return impose harsh austerity measures to whatever party is declared as the winner.So, in September 2009 we dared to inform the world that Greece was being set up to lose its national sovereignty, in an era when "money existed". Greek citizens were preparing to vote for what they thought would be a better future for themselves and the country; but what they were really voting for was our entrance into the IMF, the Troika, and the memorandums. At the time we were heavily criticized for even attempting to send out a warning to voters because these words were foreign to all of us until then but today many reflect to these two paragraphs and say "if I had only listened".
We should also take into consideration that our nation's welfare and social services are not in danger of being jeopardized. However, the only thing at risk of being thrown into danger is the future of this country and its Independence. Nothing less, nothing more."
Presently, we are living the aftermath of all these so called sci-fi theories. Back then it was understandable why people could not believe, or fathom why, or how, but today there is no excuse for any more ignorance. These warnings are now a part of history and cannot be corrected, but we still have today.
With this in mind, and having noted what we had previously forecasted, we are once again publishing an article a few hours before the elections to inform and warn citizens about what to expect the day after the elections and to highlight the possible repercussions our votes may or may not have.
Naturally we do not expect the miracle of everyone listening to what we are going to say this time either because listening and accepting the truth is very difficult. Nonetheless we are obligated to do so because we believe in our nation and its people.We especially want to safeguard its future.
It is human nature that some may be reluctant to listen to the truth, because we generally do not like negativity and once too often it is too complex to understand, and we respect this. But dear friends, listening to words full of fluff is no excuse either. They have no substance and even though they are easier on the stomach, they are just fluff.
We cannot publish fluff, we need to publish the truth.
Everyday most of us hear people talking about the negative and positive aspects of the memorandum, going back to the drachma or remaining in the euro zone, exiting the European Union or remaining as a member state, and so on and so forth. In most cases the people who address these topics, apart from a select few, do not really know what they are talking about and in most cases do not even realize what repercussions each one of these decisions can have.
Certainly most of us have sort of figured out by now that some of the dilemmas associated with the Memorandums are based on sheer propaganda, faulty estimations, and in most cases are even incompetent guesses from interests that are not only confined to our country, but are foreign in nature. Indeed, this last group of interests does not really care about our nation, nor its people all they care about is their own monetary interests.
So let us talk about the memorandum. The memorandum is an agreement within the framework of the EU and the member states that are financially weak in the face of a global economic crisis. Whether or not this was fabricated is not the issue at the moment because at this point all that matters is securing our position.
The Memorandum gives each member state a set of guidelines to follow so that they it can reach the economic results it needs in order to lift itself out of its economic woes. The overall aim of the Memorandum is to bring the indicators of each member state to the levels of all other EU states. But the measures stated in the memorandum are never designed by the Troika, they are always an invention of the government in power.
With this in mind we now know that the Troika does not dictate what measures each country needs to take in order to get its economy back into line but all it does is give it the guidelines in order to do so.
So who adopts the measures? The only entity that adopts the measures to meet the guidelines set forth in the Memorandum is the government in power. In our case, all the measures that included a slashing of pensions and wages were decided 100 PERCENT by the ruling PASOK party.
In order to understand this even more, the Memorandum advises the state to slash its expenses, but this does not in any way mean that wages and pensions need to be slashed. It only means that the state has to cut down on public spending. Cutting down on state expenses means that you can abolish bonuses that are given out to state officials for faxing a piece of paper, or killing double-held public sector positions, or even abolishing tens of thousands of fake pensions and benefits. This last measure was actually something the government of PASOK was finally forced to do after being reluctant to do so for over 2 years.
For the past two and a half years these simple, and common sense measures, as well as many others, were not implemented by the ruling PASOK government and Greece found itself at the end of an economic tightrope. If these common sense measures had been taken from the very beginning, together with a few others, then our wages would never have been slashed and our pensioners would have never suffered. In fact our lives would have not really changed. Most importantly the recession which has plagued our country as a result of the 2008 global economic crisis would never have deepened further.
But PASOK, which has since 1981 built an army of voters with such tactics and methods, did not even want to even approach this subject, let alone be responsible for crushing the very sappy system it worked so hard to build. This is why it chose to slash wages and pensions horizontally and make all citizens suffer the consequences rather than get on the bad side with its own army of voters, who we all know are in the public sector. One example of this is the recent elections of union heads at the Federation of Pan-Hellenic Municipal Workers Union,POE-OTA ,where PASOK once again claimed victory. (In an era when there is so much negativity against PASOK... why would state workers vote in favor of PASOK e? Because they have not really suffered any consequences from the current crisis... that is why.)
But this is only one example.
Now before we close the chapter on what the Memorandum is, let us also take Ireland as an example. Ireland has also adopted the same Memorandum but it never slashed wages and pensions and even though it is suffering from the same economic recession it has maintained the second largest minimum wage in the EU of about 1,300 Euros per month.
On to the loan agreements are and what they really represent. The loan agreements accompany the memorandum and have a fixed duration that is indicated in the memorandums. They are nothing more than a guarantee mechanism that states that each member state will always have the liquidity it needs and access to capital.
Also the loan agreements secure the banking system of each country, especially when 80 percent of its population is indebted to these institutions and has placed their homes and assets as collateral. This deters the collapse of banking system giving elasticity towards all of those in debt. Looking at it from the other end, and if the banking system were ever to collapse, then this would have proportional consequences for depositors and investors.
The exchange of state bonds or the PSI, is also linked to the memorandum and basically stretches the expiration date on the bonds for about thirty years, so that each member state has enough time to bring its economy back into line and then allow investors to cash in on them without having to once again suffer economic repercussions.
These sort of bonds usually have an interest-rate of about 2 percent and the largest chunk of these bonds that caused us to reach this economic tightrope were issued by the late Andreas Papandreou's government and set to expire in 2013 and 2014. Unfortunately the interest rate on these specific bonds had skyrocketed to 17 percent and we were not financially sound to pay them out.
When these bonds were auctioned our country borrowed a series of loans, and whether we like it or not, whether this money was rightfully used or not does not matter anymore because this was over 30 years ago and they have to be paid back. Indeed specific politicians fattened their wallets from these loans, and indeed the people of Greece have been left to pay for them but this is not the fault of the investors who purchased these bonds 30 years ago and who credited Greece with the loans we needed to function as a nation.
In simple words, the bond holder is not responsible for the kickbacks that personalities such as Akis Tsochatzopoulos and every Akis received, the price tag of which was added to our debt by the way. And to understand this even better let's say our leaders decided to turn this capital into confetti, then this would obviously not be the fault of the bondholder, and cannot excuse us as a nation which received these loans of ever paying them back.
This is why we cannot deny this debt, because we borrowed this money as a nation. And if we really need to get down to the nitty-gritty, this debt did not only mount because politicians wanted to live lavish lives. Many state officials are also to blame for issuing illegal pensions, suspicious state subsidies, pricey state supplies and non governmental organizations (NGOs) mushroomed everywhere. We also discovered officials who held two positions in the state;who incidentally never even showed up to work. A public sector that was bloated was also discovered and ridiculous state benefits were given out to very incompetent state workers and so forth.
Many people believe that if we declared bankruptcy that we will not notice the changes because as most of us say "things cannot get any worse" right?
Wrong.
The reality is that we might not notice the dramatic effects right away, and certainly the nation will still have enough capital to pay wages and pensions but the immediate effect is that Greece will have to adopt everything that was signed in the Memorandum! This means that all the economic targets set forth in the Memorandum, and that span over a five year term, will have to be met immediately!
Let’s be more specific. A country does not function like a neighborhood shop where one can simply close up for the day and go home, it needs to continue to operate, but how will it be able to do so if it suddenly does not exist on the markets? Even our politicians do not understand this logic and that is why we hear many claiming that if we declared bankruptcy then we would not have any more money to pay wages and pensions. This is not so.
PASOK obviously used this to traumatize voters into believing that they would not have any funds to pay state pensions and wages thinking that they would win the sympathy of their voters. In reality they were lying, because it is simply incorrect.
The nation will still have funds to pay wages and pensions, but it will not be able to import primary goods in order to produce goods such as foods. Fuel will also become a priceless commodity.
Others say we should exit from the Memorandum but remain in the EU, while others that we should exit from both. However, have you heard anyone question what would happen the day after we did so? No, because each political party plays on the sentiment of voters and certainly does not state the whole truth. Their job after all is to gain the trust of voters and not lose it.
Let us clear up one more thing. It is also a fact that the EU cannot throw us out of the Euro zone, or even out of Europe for that matter nor can we leave on our own choosing, as stipulated in all the relevant treaties that our country has already signed. With this in mind, the only way we can exit from the Euro zone is to completely leave from the EU. This is where all the juice is, and this how we will begin to analyze the repercussions of our vote and difficult decision we have to make at this Sunday's elections.
If our nation decided to elect a power in government to declare bankruptcy for example then this would have grave and dramatic repercussions for our country, and will place us in a very vulnerable position (both economically and politically).
Indeed it will not affect our wages and pensions, but the banking system will directly feel the crunch and this will immediately have an impact on the real economy. That is why we mentioned imports. This will have an immediate effect on what we consume.
Today Greece imports most of what it consumes and even if farmers began producing all the goods our nation needed, we would still need imports such as fertilizer to grow these goods otherwise known as primary goods. Also, by the time these goods actually begin growing we would still need to consume goods that would have to be imported.
So let's say we declared bankruptcy and decided to test the markets so that we can import some goods to our country. A nation which declares bankruptcy is not really well liked in the financial markets so creditors will think twice about forwarding credit to us. So what might happen, and in most cases does, is that they will force us to operate on a cash basis because they do not trust us and let's not kid ourselves if we went bankrupt cash would not really be openly accessible.
The few companies that are actually operating in Greece will also immediately feel the effects and choose to relocate to neighboring nations where primary goods are more readily available and then they will sell their goods to our market This means that all the people that work for these companies will be left jobless, and there will be no regulation on the goods they sell to the Greece which can sky-rocket 10-fold. For example if potatoes are priced at .60 cents a kilo today, they will be selling for 3 or even 4 euros a kilo if this happens.
This is the bitter truth
This is why we cannot deny this debt, because we borrowed this money as a nation. And if we really need to get down to the nitty-gritty, this debt did not only mount because politicians wanted to live lavish lives. Many state officials are also to blame for issuing illegal pensions, suspicious state subsidies, pricey state supplies and non governmental organizations (NGOs) mushroomed everywhere. We also discovered officials who held two positions in the state;who incidentally never even showed up to work. A public sector that was bloated was also discovered and ridiculous state benefits were given out to very incompetent state workers and so forth.
Many people believe that if we declared bankruptcy that we will not notice the changes because as most of us say "things cannot get any worse" right?
Wrong.
The reality is that we might not notice the dramatic effects right away, and certainly the nation will still have enough capital to pay wages and pensions but the immediate effect is that Greece will have to adopt everything that was signed in the Memorandum! This means that all the economic targets set forth in the Memorandum, and that span over a five year term, will have to be met immediately!
Let’s be more specific. A country does not function like a neighborhood shop where one can simply close up for the day and go home, it needs to continue to operate, but how will it be able to do so if it suddenly does not exist on the markets? Even our politicians do not understand this logic and that is why we hear many claiming that if we declared bankruptcy then we would not have any more money to pay wages and pensions. This is not so.
PASOK obviously used this to traumatize voters into believing that they would not have any funds to pay state pensions and wages thinking that they would win the sympathy of their voters. In reality they were lying, because it is simply incorrect.
The nation will still have funds to pay wages and pensions, but it will not be able to import primary goods in order to produce goods such as foods. Fuel will also become a priceless commodity.
Others say we should exit from the Memorandum but remain in the EU, while others that we should exit from both. However, have you heard anyone question what would happen the day after we did so? No, because each political party plays on the sentiment of voters and certainly does not state the whole truth. Their job after all is to gain the trust of voters and not lose it.
Let us clear up one more thing. It is also a fact that the EU cannot throw us out of the Euro zone, or even out of Europe for that matter nor can we leave on our own choosing, as stipulated in all the relevant treaties that our country has already signed. With this in mind, the only way we can exit from the Euro zone is to completely leave from the EU. This is where all the juice is, and this how we will begin to analyze the repercussions of our vote and difficult decision we have to make at this Sunday's elections.
If our nation decided to elect a power in government to declare bankruptcy for example then this would have grave and dramatic repercussions for our country, and will place us in a very vulnerable position (both economically and politically).
Indeed it will not affect our wages and pensions, but the banking system will directly feel the crunch and this will immediately have an impact on the real economy. That is why we mentioned imports. This will have an immediate effect on what we consume.
Today Greece imports most of what it consumes and even if farmers began producing all the goods our nation needed, we would still need imports such as fertilizer to grow these goods otherwise known as primary goods. Also, by the time these goods actually begin growing we would still need to consume goods that would have to be imported.
So let's say we declared bankruptcy and decided to test the markets so that we can import some goods to our country. A nation which declares bankruptcy is not really well liked in the financial markets so creditors will think twice about forwarding credit to us. So what might happen, and in most cases does, is that they will force us to operate on a cash basis because they do not trust us and let's not kid ourselves if we went bankrupt cash would not really be openly accessible.
The few companies that are actually operating in Greece will also immediately feel the effects and choose to relocate to neighboring nations where primary goods are more readily available and then they will sell their goods to our market This means that all the people that work for these companies will be left jobless, and there will be no regulation on the goods they sell to the Greece which can sky-rocket 10-fold. For example if potatoes are priced at .60 cents a kilo today, they will be selling for 3 or even 4 euros a kilo if this happens.
This is the bitter truth
Of course, this is what would happen if we declared bankruptcy but remained in the euro zone. If on the other we exited the euro zone and returned to the drachma then theoretically speaking we would be obligated to print money to do so, but this would send our inflation rate to the roof!
The same theory applies to the price of goods.
Also, even if pensions and wages did not decrease further after the bankruptcy, or to Eastern European levels, such as Bulgaria for example then the 500 euros earned by every Greek against the 138 euros which is earned by a Bulgarian will actually equal to 1/5 because of the devaluation of the drachma.
The following claim which states that we should call the debt odious and get it written off sounds reasonable in theory but in practice it might not be as simple as we think. And here is where we will tie in our article's title " Who Really Benefits From Turning Greece Into Another Argentina".
Have you paused for a moment and considered who would benefit from turning our country into another Argentina, when we know very well that Greece is surrounded by nations that for some strange and suspicious reason have access to remarkable loans and funds? How is it that these countries always seem to find the credit they need in order to produce more making them very powerful and economically sound?
Is this maybe because specific interests want them to become the new "super power" in the wider region? Sounds like a common sense question doesn't it? Of course it is... and yes we are referring to Turkey, which is surprisingly being followed by a set of puppies by the name of Albania and FYROM.
Even if Greece tapped into other markets such as Russia, as the Independent Greek party states, then this would not be a gift... it would still be a loan and we would still be obligated to pay back this loan to the Kremlin. Furthermore, we would still be obligated to put up some collateral in order to cover the loan because every transaction needs to be backed by some sort of security.
But let’s say we did this. Then we will open yet another can of worms and this is because we would be placing the EU and the US across the table from us.
The right decision, and the logical decision, would be to sit on the same side with all nations, just like little Cyprus has done, but this takes time to plan. Friends, we do not live in a utopia and we know that there is a battle between the East and the West which is not our dilemma to solve, and we do not need to place countries across the table from us, especially when they are more powerful than us, and can utterly destroy us. We also have to take into consideration the fact that Turkey has developed very strong ties with all these nations. Germany for instance has invested to a great extent in Turkey, while the US uses Turkey as its eyes and ears in the Middle East.
Far from the oil and natural gas in the Black Sea, we also know there is natural gas and oil in the Aegean, and if we placed these countries across the table from us then who is to guarantee us that they would not hesitate to create a new "Cyprus" crisis in the Aegean and give all this wealth to only one party?
Lastly, the joint Russian-Turkish pipeline venture,which George Papandreou unfortunately placed an end to, has generated even greater interests for Russia that do not really concern our country but rather the wider region.
And the obvious question is what would happen if Greece lost the few allies that remain?
An utter catastrophe would happen.
So what are we faced with here and how do we go about handling this? Indeed, these "allies" are sucking our blood with a straw, but at least we have a security blanket over us to continue functioning as a nation. Our soverignty might have been compromised, but at least it is presently under the protection of the EU.
If we lose this security blanket then can anyone guarantee us that the situation in our area of the world will remain calm? Can anyone guarantee that Greece will we be dragged into an unwanted and heated confrontation with a "super power" such as Turkey? Will the EU be on our side when and if this happens, or will it choose to defend its interests which at the moment are in Turkey?
Think long and hard.
Turkey, which also borrows capital from the same financial markets as we do, the same ones which are presently squeezing our economy, will suddenly and suspiciously find the funds it needs to hammer down on our country and it will not hesitate for a moment to seize Greek assets for peanuts.
So what are we faced with here and how do we go about handling this? Indeed, these "allies" are sucking our blood with a straw, but at least we have a security blanket over us to continue functioning as a nation. Our soverignty might have been compromised, but at least it is presently under the protection of the EU.
If we lose this security blanket then can anyone guarantee us that the situation in our area of the world will remain calm? Can anyone guarantee that Greece will we be dragged into an unwanted and heated confrontation with a "super power" such as Turkey? Will the EU be on our side when and if this happens, or will it choose to defend its interests which at the moment are in Turkey?
Think long and hard.
Turkey, which also borrows capital from the same financial markets as we do, the same ones which are presently squeezing our economy, will suddenly and suspiciously find the funds it needs to hammer down on our country and it will not hesitate for a moment to seize Greek assets for peanuts.
So can someone please explain to us what type of interests the voices claiming to exit the Memorandum are serving?
If our nation is suddenly thrown into complete chaos, and loses this security blanket and a strong government does not surface from these crucial elections then whose interests would our votes be serving?
Friends... We unfortunately only have two choices at the upcoming elections. We can either choose to vote for a tragedy, or an all out catastrophe. This is where Mr Money-Exists -Papandreou led us and we do not have any other alternatives.
Things were different while we were still in the first Memorandum. At the time, both the US and Europe were in a difficult position because they were holding most of our sovereign debt in the form of bonds. If we had declared bankruptcy back then, our country would have triggered a massive global crisis, and possibly harmed the US and the EU economies. But this "pistol" which George Papandreou said he used, was purposely never really fired, nor was it ever waved at our investors; and we are suffering from his incompetency today. Today, our death as a nation will not have that much of an impact. In the two years since the first Memorandum, the interests that were holding Greek bonds had enough time to lower their losses, they armed their economies and now they are not afraid. Rather, they are indifferent to whether or not we declare bankruptcy.
Again, this is the bitter truth as hard as it is to accept.
So in a short run, the only forces that are gaining from all this mess George Papandreou placed us in is the smaller parties such as SYRIZA, the Independent Greek party, George Karatzaferis and his political party of LAOS. The stronger they get, the more the "interests" who set us up to fall as a nation rub their hands with glee.
We will refuse to comment on their party platforms, because when reading their proposals we did not disagree with anything they referred to. Everything they referred to was actually music to our ears. Our question is simple- given all the detailed information we have given you, and the state that the Greek economy is presently in why do we as a people choose to turn away from the ugly truth and prefer only listening to policies that sound pleasant to us? How will we ever exit from this crisis which we were dragged in, without putting in a little bit of effort?
Obviously things have to change. We are suffering today because we never dared to change things in this country. Things cannot remain the same, or we will throw ourselves in the same situation again in the future and we cannot risk this because it can be our bitter end.
Indeed, many games have been played, are still being played, behind our backs by many interests. However, the future of this country lies in our own hands.
In 2009 we chose to listen to fluff, because we turned away from someone who spoke to us about tightening our belts for two years. It was not music to our ears and we did not want to put in the effort. Since then, we not only tightened our belts but have lost our pants in the process because we believed in fluff.
Today, the situation is very serious. We are in an extremely vulnerable position as a nation to even gamble our tomorrows on a hunch, or a chance. Indeed our pockets might temporarily be empty, but they will once again fill up as soon as we begin putting in the effort and laying the foundation our country needs so that it never falls victim to such an economic attack again.
Before we end this article, we also want to speak briefly on the Greek mass media. We all know that the Greek mass media is not always on the up and up, but have you really asked yourselves why they totally support a multiparty government. Now why is that? Has anyone really asked themselves why they are so insistent about this?
Only one thing is certain, we need to have some sort of government come Monday morning. And following this, we have to punish all of those who designed and led us into this tragedy.
For now though, we need to get to dry land. After all you do not shoot the captain during the storm but rather allow him to take you to dry land and once he does you then make your move.
Until then... Vote with logic and not anger. Our future as a nation depends on it.
Happy voting!
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