Greece is indeed facing the choice that many victims caught in the World Trade Centre on 9/11 had to make. Whether to die in the building's inferno or die by jumping off the 115 storey building.
If Greece does not accept the additional austerity package prescribed to it by the Troika of the IMF, EU and ECB it will default as it has no money to pay its loans which mature on 20th March 2012. If it accepts the additional austerity in order to get more financing and qualify for a substantial debt voluntary write-off, it will squeeze innocent victims of the crisis who are the already suffering deprivation and poverty and who have not benefited from the largesse of the excessive borrowing by incompetent and corrupt politicians and the oligarchs that supported them.
A dire choice indeed!! Default will mean that Greece would lose the support of the EU and the ECB, its banking system will collapse and the country could well fall into anarchy as the corrupt who exported their ill-gotten gains will bring them back to buy government assets in devalued drachma on the cheap. These oligarchs would benefit twice, first when they made illicit untaxed gains and then when they can use such gains to buy state assets for peanuts.
If the austerity programme is accepted to avoid default then again the poor who are sleeping out in the cold and families who are finding it difficult to put food on their table will have to pay through more hardship to redeem their country from the excesses of those who evaded taxes and took their fortunes out of the country.
Say a prayer for Greece. May Chancellor Merkel realise that austerity without solidarity will backfire on all Europe.
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