{"id":7336,"date":"2013-03-06T12:30:44","date_gmt":"2013-03-06T17:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.multiplier-effect.org\/?p=7336"},"modified":"2013-03-06T12:37:06","modified_gmt":"2013-03-06T17:37:06","slug":"what-to-do-when-reality-refuses-to-cooperate-with-your-theory-greek-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/what-to-do-when-reality-refuses-to-cooperate-with-your-theory-greek-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"What to Do When Reality Refuses to Cooperate With Your Theory, Greek Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

The evident failure of the ongoing austerity and “structural adjustment” experiments in Greece and the rest of the eurozone might have prompted some reconsideration of the intellectual foundations of those policies.\u00a0 Instead, as C. J. Polychroniou observes in his latest policy note<\/a>, one notable reaction seems to have been to blame the test subjects:<\/p>\n

In drafting the document for the so-called \u201cSecond Economic Adjustment Programme for Greece,\u201d the EU\u2019s neoliberal lackeys contended that \u201cGreece made mixed progress towards the ambitious objectives of the first adjustment program.” On the positive side, it is noted, the general government deficit was reduced \u201cfrom 15.75 percent of GDP in 2009 to 9.25 percent in 2011.\u201d On the negative side, the recession \u201cwas much deeper than previously projected\u201d because, it is claimed, factors such as \u201csocial unrest\u201d and \u201cadministrative incapacity\u201d (including a lack of effectiveness in combating tax evasion) \u201champered implementation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The antigrowth \u201cfiscal and structural adjustment\u201d program was perfectly designed and would have produced all the anticipated results if the government were better fit to carry out the policies … and if the citizenry did not on occasion make some fuss about them by staging demonstrations here and there or by occupying the square outside the Greek parliament building. In essence, this is what the above statement says.<\/p>\n

The puny excuses of the EU bureaucrats for the fiscal consolidation program\u2019s causing a much sharper economic decline than \u201cpreviously projected\u201d fly in the face of the recent partial concessions made by the IMF: that the policies carried out in Greece ended up having much more adverse effects on the economy because the Fund miscalculated the impact of the fiscal multiplier. Indeed, the executive summary of the \u201cSecond Economic Adjustment Programme for Greece\u201d goes on to state unequivocally that, insofar as the prospects of the success of the second adjustment program are concerned, \u201cthe implementation risks . . . remain very high\u201d but the success of the program \u201cdepends chiefly on Greece.\u201d<\/p>\n

The neoliberal economics applied to Greece by Germany, the EU, and the IMF did not simply cause a greater decline in Greek GDP than \u201coriginally projected\u201d or make the debt grow substantially bigger in the course of the last two years (from 126.8 percent in 2010 to 180 percent in 2012). It also produced an economic and social catastrophe of proportions unparalleled in peacetime Europe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read Polychroniou’s policy note here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The evident failure of the ongoing austerity and “structural adjustment” experiments in Greece and the rest of the eurozone might have prompted some reconsideration of the intellectual foundations of those policies.\u00a0 Instead, as C. J. Polychroniou observes in his latest policy note, one notable reaction seems to have been to blame the test subjects: In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[141,428,556,238,19,212,216,555,488],"class_list":["post-7336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eurozone-crisis","tag-austerity","tag-c-j-polychroniou","tag-demonstrations","tag-eurozone-crisis-2","tag-greece","tag-imf","tag-multiplier","tag-structural-adjustment","tag-troika"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7336"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7363,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7336\/revisions\/7363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}