Digging a grave for Greece
With renewed pressure for Greece to be ousted from the eurozone, we would expect the government to increase it efforts to convince the skeptics that it is moving full speed ahead with the vast reform drive that it has agreed to and which will help pull the country out of the very impasse that is making it seem like a threat to the common currency.
Instead, all we are seeing is more chest-thumping and endless talk by government officials about how the country?s finances will be put in order, how corruption and waste in the state will be dealt with and how tax evaders will be forced to pay their debts. Instead, what we are seeing is delays in the application of the reform program and the outright undermining of stated policy goals.
One example of this foot-dragging is the extension Athens will request from its creditors in order to draw up a new framework for public sector salaries, while the decision to remove 70 local authority bodies from the list of state services that will merge or be shut down because they are obsolete is a shining example of the government undermining its own policy goals.
