The neoliberal think-tanks eased up on credit borrowings assuming that they could later fill the gap through injections of massive amounts of Iraqi oil to boost Western industrial economies.

 

April 30, 2010 (Hamsayeh.Net) - Greeks are up in arms and ready to protest massive governmental cuts that target the average poor working population. Athens announced it is ready to do what’s necessary to save as much money as possible in order to bring back the country’s economy on its feet.

 

‘The immediate emergency measures will be a strong bridge to cross over to great changes, secure the life of every citizen and have dynamic growth in a more just society,’ George Papandreou, the Greek prime minister said on Thursday.

 

Greece faces huge debt payments due on May 19 and must convince other European Union members particularly Germany - the biggest lender - that it’s ready to make sacrifices.

 

The ballooning debt accumulated over several years of easy credit spending a brainchild of neoliberal ideology and free-market practices. Consecutive US government administrations and above all the Bush administration encouraged free-market measures at the time of Iraqi invasion and its so-called war on terrorism in the Middle East. It temporarily diverted world’s public attention away from questioning the legality of waging war on a sovereign state, by giving promises of a happier world in the making.

 

The neoliberal think-tanks eased up on credit borrowings assuming that they could later fill the gap through injections of massive amounts of Iraqi oil to boost Western industrial economies. But due to some unfortunate turn of events, things backfired and markets around the world crashed in 2008 bringing down the global economy as well as economies of Greece, Iceland, Spain, Estonia, UK, US and Spain amongst others that borrowed heavily during that period.

 

The same group of financier is still in power but pretend to be taking a different course of action on economic theories than before. For this reason most Greeks and people elsewhere believe that culprits behind the Western economic demise want the average people to pay for someone else's mistake.

 

Greece’s main trade union conveyed its outrage at conditions set forth by  European powers and the IMF. The trade union officials said the IMF is demanding the government to raise taxes, scarp bonuses of two full months salary and freeze pay hikes for three years.

 

‘They want Greece to cut the deficit by 10 percentage points in 2010 and 2011 ... so that Greece can go back and borrow on markets in the third year of the program,’ Aljazeera quoted a trade union official as saying.