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 SHOULD START SAVING BEFORE WE HELP THEM AGAIN»
The facts: In 2010, Greece’s budget deficit was about 10.5% of economic performance. Athens promised to bring this deficit down to 7.5 % in 2011. This will unlikely succeed, and the consequence is that the interest rate for loans on the capital market will not sink, Greece will remain cut off from the capital market and unable to borrow new funds as planned in 2012. That is why new state support is being taken into consideration to help Athens avoid being illiquid.
Context: It is not right to deduce that Greece does not save, just because of the high deficit in 2011. Greece is not only saving, but is doing so at an extreme level. Because of the austerity measures, the Greeks have lost almost 20 % of their income on average since the beginning of 2010 (25). «No other industrial nation has reduced its structural deficit by so much within one year in the last 25 years», rating agency Fitch has even admitted (26). And the Berenberg Bank sees Athens’ programme of austerity measures as «probably the hardest fiscal adjustment ever to have been made by a Western country» (27).
The fact that the deficit will likely be higher than planned in 2011 does not have to do with extravagance in Athens. Spending is not too high – income is too low. This, in turn, has to do with the harsh austerity measures. As the state is saving, and reducing wages and pensions, economic performance is suffering. Private consumption, for example, was 18% lower in March 2011 than one year before and, in the same period, 65,000 companies went bankrupt. A reduction in gross national product of almost 4 % is expected for the year as a whole. The result of this is that less tax is being paid. Between January and April 2011, revenue from taxes was 7 % below the previous year’s figure for the same period. All in all, the Greek tax authorities have taken in 1.2 billion euros less than expected. And so, it is not excessive spending that is the problem in Athens, but the austerity measures themselves. «We doubt that the Greek economy can withstand an aggressive and prolonged fiscal adjustment.» (4)
(1) FAZ newspaper, 25.5.2011
(2) Financial Times Germany, 26.5.2011
(3) Berenberg Bank, Macro Views, 20.5.2011
(4) Societé Generale, The Economic News, 5.4.2011
Engelsk text: Stephan Kaufmann: «Sell your islands, you bankrupt Greeks»: 20 popular fallacies concerning the debt crisis, utgiven av Rosa Luxemburgstiftelsen. Sid 12
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.
