Saknar du också en enkel introduktion till Greklands finanskris? I en serie inlägg som publiceras här på bloggen diskuteras många av de frågor och påstående som Greklandskrisen givit upphov till. Vanliga påstående granskas och sätts i sitt sammanhang. Texterna är hämtade från «Sell your islands, you bankrupt Greeks»: 20 popular fallacies concerning the debt crisis, utgiven av Rosa Luxemburgstiftelsen. Texten utgår från Tysklands roll, men mycket av det som förekommer i den tyska diskussionen har förekommit i svensk press också.
«THE GREEKS ARE CORRUPT»
The facts: It is true that tax fraud and tax avoidance are more prevalent in Greece than in other countries and that «corruption is everywhere» (1). The shadow economy is estimated to be about 25% of the economy (by comparison: in Germany this figure is approx. 15 % (2) and total tax fraud amounts to 20 billion euros per year (3).
Context: Tax fraud and corruption really are a great problem for Greece. Three things must be said in this respect: tax fraud is a kind of redistribution of wealth from the state to the private sector. Therefore, the money is not «gone» as such. And so, this argument does not help us to explain the Greek crisis.
Secondly, «the former Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis was responsible for the Greek mess. He was a close ally of Chancellor Merkel in the EU. With the help of the willing Greek, Merkel managed on various occasions to penetrate the front of the southern nations in important EU decisions. Karamanlis was always there to make deals. In return, the Greek did not have to worry about any overcritical questions concerning his sloppy financial policies.› This quote comes from the former Editor-in-Chief of German economic magazine, the Handelsblatt.»(4)
Thirdly, large German companies also profited from the backhander culture in the Greek economy. «Since 2008, several legal disputes have documented that the German companies Siemens, Ferrostaal-MAN and Deutsche Bahn AG bought Greek politicians in great style and ‹financed› political decisions in their favour. In this way, the Siemens Group alone ‹invested› almost 15 million euros per year in Greece over a period of ten years from the middle of the 1990s in order to win over and influence politicians from the two important parties, Nea Dimokratia and PASOK.» (5)
And fourthly: Measured by the corruption-index of Transparency International Greece is indeed much more corrupt that Germany. But at the same time, there is much less corruption in Greece than in countries like Indonesia or China, which are economically very successful.
(1) Spiegel-online, 10.3.2010
(2) IAW press release, 26.1.2010
(3) The Standard, 11.2.2010
(4) Michael Schlecht: The Euro is burning. Position paper 21.5.2010
(5) Greece, the IMF and EU dictate and German responsibility, position paper issued by the scientific advisory board of Attac Germany.
Engelsk text: Stephan Kaufmann: «Sell your islands, you bankrupt Greeks»: 20 popular fallacies concerning the debt crisis, utgiven av Rosa Luxemburgstiftelsen. Sid 10
Greklands kris är en kris för hela Euro-samarbetet. Om valutan ska vara stabil förutsätter det att de länder Euron vilar på också är stabila. Därför påverkar utvecklingen i Grekland framtiden för hela Euro-samarbetet. Ovanstående text fokuserar på Tysklands roll som är den största aktören inom EMU. Men alla länder inom EMU tvingas ta ställning till hur krisen ska lösas och det finns flera alternativ. Om detta har Erik Bengtsson, skrivet två omfattande inlägg: Grekisk hjärngympa och uppföljande Mer om Europas kris här på bloggen.
