John Humphrys was in the Sunday Times last week giving us a great example of how the BBC thinks….the Greek tragedy? It’s the fault of the Bankers, Big Business and Government…investment bankers and politicians on the make who green lighted Greece’s entry into the Euro…anything to do with the Greek people themselves? No. No. No. says Humphrys as he ‘slays the big fat Greek myth’.
Oh, hang on, what’s this he goes on to tell us…a woman who refuses to get married as she will lose the pension she has inherited from her father…pensions that provided a very comfortable old age….the electorate who were bribed by the political parties…and, yes, they took what was offered no questions asked….the price of that acquiescence? Appalling corruption on just about every level. Don’t want to pay taxes…slip the tax man a few Drachma.
And of course they all signed up eagerly to join the Euro…it wasn’t forced on them…as one Greek said ‘There is big blame’ on the Greek people for voting the way they did……and even now they demand to stay in…
Despite the budget cuts, euro membership is hugely popular in Greece, with polls suggesting that nearly two-thirds of the population are in favour of the move.
Humphrys started his piece by saying that Greeks would have no truck with debt before they joined the EU….this all changed with the advent of the Euro and ‘all hell broke loose’.…which is a subject I’m sure for another discussion about that other BBC bias…Europe.
So it was Greece entering the Euro that crashed its economy and led to massive debts? They already had massive debts…
Blame It On Profligate Spending
This could only lead to an inescapable conclusion as noted by the CFR (Council on Foreign Relations):
“Even if Greece had remained outside the euro zone, its dependence on euro borrowing would only have increased. A falling drachma would merely have brought the current crisis to a head earlier by accelerating the rise in Greece’s debt-to-GDP ratio (think Iceland)….the problem is excessive foreign borrowing, a problem with which Greece has struggled since the early 19th century.”
Well certainly the Euro hasn’t helped but the truth is it didn’t cause Greece’s problems merely compounded them…and made it more difficult to escape them….
The problem for Greece, and other countries in the eurozone, is that a single interest rate and exchange rate do not allow easy adjustment to external crises, and leave domestic devaluation through cuts in wages and prices as the only other option. The lack of institutional support for weaker members from the centre when the euro was created placed the entire burden at times of need on individual Euro governments. That came at huge cost to their economies.
Greece was broke before she entered…..Greece should never have entered the Euro as its economy was in no shape to hold its own and meet the stringent requirements of the Euro zone…as the BBC tells us…
How ‘magic’ made Greek debt disappear before it joined the euro
Greece is at the heart of the ongoing eurozone crisis, but is past sleight of hand by Greek statisticians to blame for the country’s current financial meltdown?
“We used to call him the magician, because he could make everything disappear.
“He made inflation disappear. And then he made the deficit disappear,” recalls Greek economist Miranda Xafa.
Greece fulfilled the Maastricht criteria and was admitted to the eurozone on January 1, 2001 – but by 2004 the deception was becoming transparent.
The difference between the published deficit and the real one was huge.
“[The gap] was about 7% of GDP,” Mr Doukas says.
“The budget said the deficit was 1.5%. The real shortfall was 8.3%.”
Certainly the politicians and bankers who signed off entry into the Euro can take much of the blame but to try and say Greeks themselves are completely innocent is false……Much of that debt was to pay for the massive public sector employment, there were more employees on the rail service than customers, and extremely generous pensions allowed Greeks to retire at 50 and live well, whilst a failure to collect taxes meant that paying for all this largesse was clearly going to be a problem…eventually…..but entering the Euro meant that Greece had sudden access to cheap money and could borrow even more…..an irony perhaps that the EU, part of the problem with cheap money and yet an economic policy straitjacket on Greece, should now be so hard on Greece.
Greece was always heading for a fall but joining the EU speeded that up and whilst forcing some reality upon the Greeks actually stopped them from doing the one thing that would have helped the most….currency devaluation.
The Greek people signed up to all of this and the structure of the Greek economy with its welfare dependency on government spending paid for by borrowing…and they of course signed up to the Euro and still want to be in the club.
Humphrys, who has a house in Greece and is a frequent visitor, with a son who lives and works there, is clearly twisting the facts to suit his own personal agenda…be nice to the Greek people in their moment of tragedy. A sentiment that pervades the BBC’s own reporting on many subjects not least Islam with the BBC’s stubborn refusal to make any link to the violence around the world and the religion of Islam in cas eit upsest a few people.
News being manipulated to hide uncomfortable truths. It always turns out bad in the end.
If Greeks vote “No” {…] Greek banks would go from their current frozen state to totally and utterly crippled. Which would dash any chance of them providing the fuel to re-start the Greek economy.
…
So there is a heavy responsibility both on Greek voters and then the European Central Bank over the next 48 hours. They will decide whether the Greek financial system and Greek economy stands or falls.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33393866
A summary of Peston’s article is: ‘People of Greece – vote to stay in the euro – your economy depends on it!’.
Nothing there about how Greece might be better off long term if it unshackles itself from its debt and gets a weaker currency (making it cheaper for people to take their holidays in Greece).
Peston’s article is titled “A referendum that will sink or rescue the Greek economy”
I had no idea that the Greek economy could actually be rescued either way! That in itself is blatant bias in my opinion.
If the Greek economy goes into a tail dive and crashes, and savings are lost and unemployment soars, with crippling poverty then hooray would say the Trots in Syzria. Now the proletariat will recognise the evils of capitalism and rise up as thy did with Lenin in Russia so long ago. Of course the revolution will be international, with Owen Jones, Kenneth Loach, Kate Hudson, and the loony luvvies of Left Unity and the People’s Assembly urging them on.
“a woman who refuses to get married as she will lose the pension she has inherited from her father”
wtf!!! How can someone “inherit” a parent’s pension. I can understand a living spouse inheriting the works pension from their dead spouse, but not a child nor the Welfare Pension either. It’s no wonder the Greek economy is a mess. If they start dealing with these stupidities they may eventually recover, if not there’s no hope for them.
John Humphreys, anything to do with him building his retirement home in Greece? Trying not to upset the neighbours eh!
6th July, R4 news, guess where John has been sent to report on the Greek crisis? Not difficult is it, Athens, along with several other BBC staff also on a jolly.
Humphreys was on the Today programme this morning (Monday) doing a bit of shroud waving with a doctor in a children’s hospital. Oddly she said they did not have a shortage of drugs except the most expensive.
I take it the BBC (and C4 News in the case of Paul Mason) allow their presenters to work from holiday.
Ta for the Harry Enfield clip!
Remember when the BBC used to be funny?
The Euro-Titanic is sinking, but there is a Drachma-Lifeboat over their. But I may drown if I try to swim over to the Drachma-Lifeboat. So in the Referendum, do I vote: (1) Yes: to stay with the Euro-Titanic. Or (2) No: And risk drowning on the swim to safety?
I could spend the rest of the afternoon enumerating the faults on both sides of the EU/Greek crisis, but for me one points stands out above all others. If the Greek people vote “Yes” today it will be a long time before they need to hold another election. “Yes” means that for the foreseeable future they will have a Prime Minister chosen by Berlin and a Finance Minister chosen by Frankfurt.
Sensible comment by Janet Daley in today’s Telegraph, why don’t we hear the like on the BBC?
Its too easy to blame the Greeks just as its to simplistic to blame the other Euro zone countries for the mess they have created. Both are frighteningly incompetent. Certainly the Greeks fiddled the accounts before they joined the euro, but the other members knew and turned a blind eye, it was always a political decision to let the Greeks join the euro never an economic one.
If the Greeks had exited in 2008, then they now might be better off. There was no way that Germany and France etc would have allowed that because of the state of the eurozone at that time – the euro would have collapsed. So they bought them off – now they have to pay the bill. It’s that simple – Greece without debt relief will be a zombie economy regardless of other (much needed) reforms.
David Cameron must be very worried now. He’s openly pro-EU and is banking on a YES majority after a successful renegotiation of our relationship with Europe. But I can’t see how ANY renegotiation is going to settle the jitters we all now have after the Greek vote.