from Der SPIEGEL
Generations of Pork
How Greece's Political Elite Ruined the Country
Photo Gallery: The Families Who Pushed Greece to the Brink
The latest tranche of loans from the EU and the IMF has helped buy debt-ridden Greece some time. But the Greeks will find it hard to get back on their feet. Their country has been ruined by three political dynasties, which created a bloated system of cronyism that is hard to change. George Provopoulos, governor of the Bank of Greece, believes torpedoing the austerity package, as the country's conservative opposition tried, would have been "suicide." Still, Provopoulos also believes Greece has "reached the limit" and that it would be impossible to squeeze any more out of the people.
In remarks to the conservative newspaper Kathimerini, he spoke about what he saw as the root cause of the crisis. "There is little doubt that the failings of (the existing social and political) system hindered the implementation of policies that would have averted the existing ills," he said. "We are paying the price of past mistakes."
The emergency financing will help Greece through the next months and it will buy the rest of the EU some time -- time in which the euro crisis may ease somewhat. But it's unlikely that it can save Greece. The last few decades have seen an elite, with the Papandreou, Karamanlis and Mitsotakis families at its core, establish a system of economic patronage. They threw around billions the government didn't actually have and showered friends and relatives with prosperity that was all based on credit. These leaders bloated their country's administration so that everyone could have a piece, and created a bureaucratic monster in the process.
The political parties' business dealings were always more about favors than policies. Anyone with access to public funds used them to buy friends and voters, who were then beholden to the party -- and to the family running it. The result for Greece has been a feudal democracy, where the generations come and go, but the names remain the same: Papandreou and Karamanlis and Karamanlis and Papandreou, with a Mitsotakis thrown in every now and then. No other European democracy has seen the like.
Olive Trees, Blue Skies and Beaches
Meanwhile, the parties' feudal princes accustomed their people to living beyond their own means. Greece, with its 11 million inhabitants, is a poor country at the far edge of the EU that has olive trees, blue skies, beaches and not much else. One in four people who work, do so for the government. It's the source everyone wants to tap. [there's some popular German bullshit lies, in here, about the Greek worker. Stick with the main topic, punks]
With political parties fleecing the nation wholesale, the people also grabbed whatever they could. The rich evaded taxes to the tune of billions, the poor scraped by with under-the-counter work and public officials opened their doors to bribery.
... Economics professor Georgios Argitis from Athens University sounds disdainful as he talks about the "ruling class of politics and capital that made the country its prey" and caused this mess. Contentious best-selling author Petros Markaris derides the "ailing state apparatus." Its representatives "have only one interest, namely maintaining their privileges," he says. "They don't give a damn about anything else." [the truth shall set you free]
He's referring, for example, to the parliament employees who still draw 14 months' salary each year, with an additional two on top of that. He's referring to the land of plenty that is the public sector, where politicians provide for those who have helped them, fathers for their family members and agency heads for their personal favorites.
Each new government which has taken office in Greece has hired thousands of officials and employees, without firing the old ones.
