What is behind the current riots and Greek debt crisis?

We should all be discouraged about the events taking place in Greece and remember that perhaps our greatest tool is to be informed about the truth of what is happening. As a Greek American, I have been asked frequently about what and how I feel about the current riots and debt crisis. I feel compelled to attempt to understand and explain this in order that more of us can be informed of the truth of Wednesday June 29th's disastrous outcome. I invite you to read on and forward this to anyone seeking a brief explanation of the Greek debt crisis.

The current protests are the result of growing anger toward the corruption of the Greek government and the IMF. The Greek Pasok-led government (current Prime Minister George Papandreou following in his father’s footsteps) has a long line of corruption and yesterday lawmakers narrowly passed a proposal to momentarily avoid bankruptcy- while everyone knows Greece will inevitably default because the economy is shrinking (the Greek economy ‘grew’ -4.5% last year).

It is important to understand that the protests are not due to cuts in government services, austerity measures or tax increases. The real danger is that as a concession to IMF, yesterday’s proposal included privatization of public assets which are rumored to include public transport and power companies and sites critical to our heritage such as the acropolis. What this means to the 70% of Greece’s workforce which is employed by the public sector is that Greeks are giving up the country and their future to the IMF bit by bit.

The alternative option yesterday should have been to acknowledge the truth that Greece would inevitably default on the debt regardless of this bailout and that holding on to public assets is in the best interests of the Greek people. The $340 billion (which only accounts for 2% GDP of the Eurozone) is a drop in the bucket. By way of Greece, the EU and IMF are targeting a small, helpless country

I am not optimistic about Greece’s ability to work out of its mountainous debt while there is an enormous problem with tax evasion. One example is the swimming pool tax. Of the 17,000 swimming pools in Athens, only 324 are declared on taxes. When it came to light that the people were cheating, a new industry began selling camouflage swimming pool covers so that they couldn’t be spotted from the air.

It is very difficult to admit that Greece and other countries such as Portugal and Ireland (next in line for the calamitous default domino-like effect) were not suitable for entering the Eurozone. Greece should have never had equal access to the same low interest loans as Germany. The remedy our politicians have offered is to print more money out of thin air, devaluating the EU and Dollar reserve currency and spreading the disaster on all of us through inflation. Once again we fall for the same trap that everything the central banks have done in the long term have been detrimental (even though in the short term it looks beneficial). Approach with caution.