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A Hopeless Case?
The IMF has just released its most recent assessment of the ‘progress’ of its austerity program in Greece. As a reminder, Greece currently ‘enjoys’ an economic depression that is more and more reminiscent of the downturn of the early 1930′s. Its GDP has been in contraction for 12 quarters running, most recently at an annualized rate of 5.5%. The rate of unemployment oscillates around the 18% mark – official unemployment, that is. Consumer confidence has collapsed, industrial production has been in decline at double digit rates since early 2008. The stock market is down by 90% from its 2007 highs and the government’s one year note yields an absurd 330%. The banking system is de facto bankrupt and subject to an accelerating flight of deposits.
You get the picture – these are the kind of economic data that normally indicate that the society concerned is only a small step away from major social upheaval and a descent into conditions of chaos. At the very extreme end of such a process it could experience what is essentially a collapse of civilization, with the division of labor increasingly breaking down and society transmogrifying into a collection of small islands of autarkic, primitive hand-to-mouth economic units that no longer even trade with each other.
To everybody’s vast surprise, the IMF has just concluded that Greece once again ‘failed to meet its targets’ as per the austerity program imposed on it by its bailout lenders.
full article at source: http://www.acting-man.com/?p=12489
Related articles
- Greece Opens New Talks With International Austerity Inspectors (foxnews.com)
- IMF OKs €2.2 billion loan for Greece (marketwatch.com)
- Samaras Sees Greek Recession Lingering (online.wsj.com)
