Greek Lawmakers Set Aside Help for Debtors

ATHENS – After approving $40 million in state funding for political parties and ratifying more austerity measures for cash-crunched Greeks, the Parliament set aside a bill that would help ease household debt saying there was not enough time to work on it. Labor and Social Insurance Minister Giorgos Koutroumanis said it was a “tragic irony” that lawmakers couldn’t get to the bill, although the temporary government of interim Prime Minister Lucas Papademos said it would act on a plan to give Greek banks $72 billion on its own ahead of a May 6 election for Greece’s new leader.
Greece has imposed losses of 74 percent on investors, including banks, as part of a scheme to write down $134 billion in debt. They include those who bought smaller amounts of Greek bonds to support the country but found much of their investments wiped out. Two people, a wealthy widower who said she lost $262,000, and a pensioner who said he lost $5,240, have sued and asked Greek courts to overturn the deal, but Greece agreed it would come under British law, preventing the Greek Parliament from being involved. Former Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos, now the leader of the PASOK Socialist party and its candidate for Prime Minister, engineered the deal after reneging on a pledge to exempt small bondholders.
Earlier, Koutroumanis had announced that talks with officials of the European Central Bank, one of Greece’s three foreign creditors, on the issue of regulating the debts of Greek households had concluded “successfully,” but gave no details and said there wasn’t enough time for the deal to be sent to the Parliament before it dissolved on April 11 so that campaigning could begin. He said it might be dealt with during an emergency government meeting, but there was no guarantee. Meanwhile, political parties who are getting new doses of taxpayer money owe the banks hundreds of millions of dollars and have made no attempt to pay.
While Greek banks are depending on being recapitalized, they lost billions of dollars when the government refused to pay them back, but they are pressing consumers to pay their loans and credit cards at the same time. Many Greek households are drowning in debt because of pay cuts, tax hikes, slashed pensions and layoffs, austerity measures that have perpetuated a deep recession with 21 percent unemployment and the closing of more than 111,000 businesses.
Banks and other businesses are pressing consumers to pay their debts and threatening legal action if they don’t, even if they are unemployed or have no assets, and the legislation the Parliament didn’t act upon was designed to help provide some relief. Earlier this month, a 77-year-old retired pharmacist shot himself in the head in Syntagma Square across the street from Parliament and left behind a note saying he couldn’t face his debt or the prospect of scrounging through garbage bins for foods.
While households are finding it difficult to pay bills, the government is moving ahead with plans to insure it’s paid by confiscating salaries, pensions, real estate and bank deposits of taxpayers, although it’s been unable to collect $10 billion in fines imposed by the courts on tax cheats who won’t pay what they owe.
(Source: Kathimerini)