Submitted by the People Democratic Congress (PDC)
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The very dire financial economic debt situation facing Greece at this stage is one that warrants significant study by many people in Barbados and beyond. Greece, which has been described on Wikipedia.com, as the cradle of Western civilization, the birthplace of Western democracy, the founder of classical Western political philosophy, the originator of European art and literature and mythology, and the Olympic games, among other things, has since 2009 been experiencing muchly severe economic and financial crises of prodigious proportions enough to shake the historical foundations of that society.
So, as it verily stands now, this vastly under populated Hellenic country – much of which lies scattered in the Aegean, Ionian and Mediterranean Seas, has been forced to undertake a draconian hell-like IMF/EU bail out, since May 2010.
Such a gargantuan political financial catastrophe will surely make it seems that much of the social development that Greece has recently achieved and that has led many others to describe it as a developed country, one with a consistently high quality of life rankings ( 22nd on the United Nations Human Development Index), and with a high income economy, would be in the process of being reversed most disgracefully by such turn of events.
This financial bail out – worth over 110 bn euros – has come about as a direct result of some very adverse complications of the Greek government carrying a very staggering persistent government deficit to GDP status, its continuing with very shocking government debt to GDP profiles ( latest Eurostat reports gross government debt to GDP ratio of 142%) , and its inability to weather the international financial economic crisis of 2008.
The major international credit rating agencies like Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s have also down graded Greece’s sovereign debt profile to junk status. Greece has also been recently assigned by Standard and Poor’s the worst rating presently for any country with a sovereign debt profile.
What is very repugnant to the majority of Greek masses, is that, the Greek government – in order to access the final draw down of this particular bail out package – would have had to go to parliament last week to secure approval for this 12 bn euro installment, but not without first agreeing with the IMF/EU to introduce a further oppressive 28 bn euros worth of spending and tax cuts, as well as it would have had to agree to the elimination of government ownership and control over many public assets.
Whereas many international news people have commented that these austerity measures have been put in place to also avoid the likelihood of any contagion effects going through Europe and the rest of the world, these said measures have obviously led to trade union-led street public demonstrations, so-called anarchist-led riots, and various other forms of civil unrest, and the usual anti-riot police responses and tactics in the country.
So, what has the PDC observed primarily about these events that have been taking place in that EU country, and what major lessons can Barbados learn from the Greek situation, given that the Barbados government, like the current Greek regime, has created serious deficit and debt problems for itself and the people of Barbados; and given that this DLP Government has been, like that country’s political regimes, NOT telling the truth with regard to many of the government’s official statistics pertaining to the rate of growth of the Barbados economy recently, and as this variable itself relates to the calculating the government debt to GDP ratio; and given that Barbados too is, like Greece, a tourism dependent economy which relies less on manufacturing and agriculture; and given that Barbados like Platos’ country is about to enter into a very difficult tumultuous phase of political capitalist economic financial development.
What we in the PDC have primarily realized is that Greece is suffering from the effects of a very dastard form of inward European colonization, wherefore more and more Germany and France are seen to be dominating the political material financial military affairs of the smaller EU countries – Ireland, Portugal, Greece, via their control of the megabloc – EU ( Germany seems to be controlling the purse strings, whereas France is emerging as the dominant European military force given its aggressive role in Libya, Ivory Coast).
So, not being any longer able to colonize and devalue the people and resources of Africa, Latin America, and South/Asia to the extent that it once used to, as a result of America’s global imperialism (dying?), and as a result of the former Soviet Union led socialist expansionism, which is helping to produce the former – America’s dying globalist agenda – and now the rise of the Chinese as an increasingly modern and global material and financial behemoth, Europe is now seen to be turning on itself more and more aggressively, with – thankfully – harmful consequences for its own viability and integrity as a political trading military bloc ( a commentator on a recent BBC world Service Radio news program suggested the invading of Greece ( he did not say which countries) if Greece did not honour its present financial debt obligations to the EU).
The essentialist truth is that Greece ( and esp. Portugal, Ireland, Spain) has finally become very vulnerable and exposed to an avalanche of baleful and dreadful effects that has been falling from an old archaic dehumanizing Eurocentric political economic financial system that has clearly for a long time, that has for centuries been failing miserably and functioning atrociously, but that which would have been coming towards Greece and the relevant European countries every since – but which primarily because of the above three major factors – were slowed in its eventual approach towards Greece.
Indeed, such a system and its failures have had their greatest resonation in this protracted but seemingly intractable debt crisis in the Euro-zone countries of Europe.
Finally, what the vast majority of Barbadian people must therefore recognize though is that evil scourges such as WORK, TAXATION, INTESTEST RATES, INSTITUIONAL REPAYABLE PRODUCTIVE LOANS, the notion of LAND OWNERSHIP, MOTOR VEHICLE INSURANCE, myths such as Inflation, have been involved in the destabilizing of Europe and the decline of the Age of America, and that they must seek to do what the majority of Greeks and the majority of Americans have failed to do – to minimize the cost of maintenance of their own political, social, material and financial existences, whilst at the same time pursuing a very indigenous progressive egalitarian model of political material financial development for their respective countries and for others.
Really, Greece stands at the frontline of these adverse and interrelated global regional developments.
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