What would you do if you’d lent loadsamoney to someone and they didn’t pay you back as agreed because they were unemployed and didn’t have the necessary? Would you demand they stop eating so they could repay a bit? Would you start taking stuff from them in lieu of interest payments? Would you threaten them with even worse deprivation, if they didn’t repay in full as agreed? Or would you realise you’d been stupid to lend them all that money in the first place without checking their ability to repay, without even checking if they had a job with some regular income?
Greece can’t repay its debts and the more austerity is enforced, the less able will Greece become. Unemployment already stands at 26% with youth unemployment around 55%. More austerity will only increase those figures reducing Greece’s capability. Martin Wolf suggests the loans to Greece were made recklessly, without due diligence, because the purpose of the loans was not to help Greece but to protect the Euro [‘Greek debt and a default of statesmanship’, Financial Times, 28/1/2015]. Greece exiting would be an example others might follow. So, while exit could be damaging for Greece, for the Euro it would be disastrous, reducing it to the category of an exchange rate peg, rather than a solid currency.
In the aftermath of the 2008 crash, there was much debate as to whether stimulus or austerity would be the best way to return economies to health. The 1930s experience, addressed by the application of common sense and common humanity, saw economies revived by the stimulus exampled by Roosevelt’s New Deal. This hard-learned lesson has been highlighted before at https://gordonpearson.co.uk/2014/10/22/a-new-new-deal/#more-1127
Continue reading The Greek Example