Let’s pretend you have some capital to invest and you have chosen to offer your cash to one of your poorer relatives in order to reform their struggling company. A noble investment. Now, would you ever invest in that company if its owners explicitly stated that they don’t believe in the only business plan they have, while also the plan makes all the people working in the company unable to sustain themselves and their families? Does this plan have any chance of success?
This is a broad metaphor of the Greek Bailout Deal, a product of good old plain denial! You can call it extend and pretend, kicking the can down the road, or any other catchy phrase analysts call it, but technically we are all saying let’s agree on the biggest lie ever created cause in fact none of us knows how to deal with reality, in Greece, or, in Europe.
However, after cash-strapped Greece reached a deal with its creditor “family” at a dramatic July 12 Euro Summit, we all took a large breath since the six-month-round of the so-called negotiations came to a mutual agreement. What if people are suffering more in Greece; where having a job that can sustain your family is considered a privilege. it doesn’t matter that pensioners are killing themselves cause they are “too proud” to look in the garbage cans for food, we still have an agreement. We agreed that Europe will stop threatening Greece with a Grexit, and Greece will stop interrupting the European Union’s dream of a union. We reset the timer on the bomb and took time to relax till we are close to the explosion again.
RELATED: Watch interviews with Greek American money experts predicting the “kick down the road” deal.
The most agreed element of this mutual agreement of Greece with its creditors is how bad the agreement is. All, have offered valid arguments that this deal might be the worst document for all the parties that agreed to it.
The Eurozone essentially made Greece sign a document stating that the country will roughly make in 3 years the reforms that should have been implemented over the past three decades. Even with that difficult start, let’s assume that they believed Greek PM Tsipras really could pass all these reforms. Let’s also assume that they believed in his superpowers to change the status quo in a country that has been resisting change for centuries. We could accept the tale, but only if -at least- PM Tsipras believed in the plan he is called to implement.
However, Tsipras’ yes to the deal goes hand-in-hand with his rhetoric of how bad that same deal is for Greece as well as for Europe.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was the first to offer scientific proof of how bad was its decision to agree on the current form of the Greek bailout deal. The IMF’s analysts produced a report admitting that the country they had just agreed on lending money has a huge unsustainable debt.
European Commission President Juncker added to the deal’s ill fate, saying that “Europe agreed on the Greek deal out of fear.” Fear to look at its problems? Perhaps.
Tsipras was successful again last night, when he convinced the Greek parliament to turn the “hideous” bailout conditions into Greek laws. His strategy of “puppy eyes” in combination with admitting the ugly truths no Greek politician has said before, seems to work since there is no alternative. However, this strategy has absolutely nothing in it for the country and its people.
The Greek prime minister seems to be able to pass any “humiliating” bill into law as long as he declares to the parliament that he doesn’t believe in it. It’s like going to an AA meeting to confess that you are an alcoholic, so you can continue drinking.
Last night the Greek parliament passed the second set of laws that will seal the new bailout deal and bring more austerity to Greece. Out Greece’s 300 parliament members nobody said to the Greek PM that the path he has been leading lacks simple continuity. Watching the plenary sessions a viewer may believe that there is an unspoken divine plan -behind the plan- that only the Greek parliament members know so they vote for it. And the Greeks follow without a choice. Because the SYRIZA government has become for the Greeks what the bailout deal is for Greece, the best of the worst options.
It couldn’t be more obvious that this Greek cabinet has zero motivation going to work every morning; to implement a plan that nobody believes in. The other theory is what former Greek finance minister explained after he voted in favor of this “planned-to-fail” deal: it buys time for “a plan against autocracy.” In this case Varoufakis suggests that Greece, sooner than later, will breach the agreement its government is signing with the EU and the IMF. But who cares? They even don’t believe in it!
In case the European leaders want to kill some more time so they don’t discuss the real problem of their dysfunctional “family” that turned Greece into a “spoiled child,” we prepared some questions that would come handy for future ambiguous referendums:
Who believes in this agreement?
Could Greece achieve growth under more austerity measures?
Would a foreign investor come to do business in a country whose economy operates under capital controls and even the banks don’t trust themselves?
How long could people live in a society without jobs?
How many more elderly have to commit suicide in Athens’ central square, Syntagma, because they feel that they are a burden on their kids as their pensions cannot even cover the costs of their vital medication?
Is this a European reality?
For how long can we keep pretending that Europe has achieved a real union?
Do you approve to make your children part of this de(ni)al?
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