Nightmare, Samaras and Roosevelt

From the United States, Antonis Samaras painted a bleak picture of the nightmare of the Greeks. ”We have lost about 25 percent of our GDP, 40 percent of our previous standard of living, and the unemployment rate has reached 27 percent,” said the prime minister and added that all this is only comparable to the Great Depression of the 1930s.

This could be a self-judgment about the cataclysmic substance of the political shocks that were implemented in Greece, but it is not. Obviously, he was not trying to appear to be a modern Roosevelt in a country where, even today, his cohort, Republicans, loath mentioning the name of the Democratic leader who got America out of history’s greatest depression with the New Deal. On the contrary, Samaras admitted that the policies implemented in our country, running counter to Roosevelt’s “tactic,” could be a nightmare, but they were worth it because they brought results, so from now on ”Greece is an example in Europe!”

Is this discursiveness or cynicism? It is the punitive Protestantism inspired by Merkel at its finest, a catastrophic policy assumed as clearance for the carefree cicadas, who need to violently become virtuous ants.

The prime minister forgot to mention that Roosevelt took over the U.S. economy during a phase of destruction, similar to the one caused by the Memorandum in Greece, and in less than six months, the countdown began with the implementation of a Keynesian policy, which was totally opposed to these policies of shock, comparable to the ones implemented by Samaras’ government in cooperation with the Troika in our country.

But let us do the math and admit for a moment that Samaras’ reasoning has a point. Greece is an example of what? The unemployment rate? It has broken all historical records. Of reducing the living standard or the gross domestic product? In these critical aspects, which are not only financial, it has surpassed every negative precedent. Therefore, the Greece of crisis nowadays is an example of what?

Samara’s government has no other ”success” to demonstrate. Is the deficit reduction worth so much as the catastrophe that unemployment has caused, the reduction of GDP and dramatic decline in the standard of living? Apparently not. The government’s success, if any, is relatively smaller, almost negligible, in relation to the nightmare it has caused, as he pointed out. The increase in unemployment itself is even worse than the so-called success, which includes the deficit reduction.

However, the increase in unemployment was an instrument for the deregulation of labor relations, downfall of wages and collapse of insurance arrangements. Samaras considers these an example for Europe: violent pauperization, demolition of the welfare state, an authoritative political system, a real nightmare-trifecta.