Surviving Financial Attack - The Official IMF User's Guide

Surviving Financial Attack - The Official IMF Survival Guide, originally uploaded by Teacher Dude's BBQ.

Debt kills - International Monetary Fund Special Tactics Division

Debt kills - IMF, originally uploaded by Teacher Dude's BBQ.

The world gets a new super hero - IMF Man

The world gets a new super hero - IMF Man, originally uploaded by Teacher Dude's BBQ.

Step aside Superman, give it up Spiderman, Batman, time to hang up the cape. There is a new kid on the block - IMF Man.

Able to destroy large economies with a single leap in interest rates, IMF Man is here is here to save the world from depravity and unwarranted public spending. See him crush trade unions with the swish of a pen and bail out out the entire banking system single - handed.

Bitten by a radioactive coackroach when young mild mannered Dominque Strauss - Kahn is a mild mannered finance specialist by day but by night he is a neo-liberal super hero fighting the evils of deficit spending wherever they rear their ugly head.

The Greek economic crisis's 600lb gorilla in the room

IMF - What "Internal Devaluation" really means for Greece., originally uploaded by Teacher Dude's BBQ.

I'm sure than you have that old medical joke, "the operation was a success but the the patient died" a thousand times but I can't help but recall it when I see on the state - run ET1 and NET news bulletins reports of how quietly optimistic the IMF/EU/ECB are about the progress Athens has been making in implementing the economic reforms needed before they approve the latest installment of the bailout package.

However, nowhere in the constant round of self - congratulation and back slapping are you going to hear anything about the issue that is most worrying to Greeks, namely unemployment. Currently, the official figure is 570,000 or 11.7% however, behind these numbers hide some truely horrifying facts. In some areas such as the Attiki region and Ionian islands the number of those looking for work has risen by up 50% in just one year. According to the latest OECD predictions unemployment is set to reach nearly 15% in 2014 whilst the Greek Trade Union Conference or GSEE (ΓΣΕΕ) is talking about a million jobless by next year out of a total labour force of 5 million.

Even this figure may be an underestimate since unemployment figures only include those signing on, which does not include many of those who have been unemployed more than one year who are considered to be "economically inactive" rather than unemployed or simply do not bother signing on as their benefits have run out. Nor are those working in the black economy (tourism and construction and even education are rife with employers who refuse to pay contributions) without national insurance who cannot claim unemployment benefit.

No provision has been made by the government for the tremendous social disruption likely to be caused by having one in five or even one in four of the work force unemployed, a number which is going to be higher if you happen to be a woman, disabled, under 25 or over 50. No mention was made of unemployment in the joint European Commission, European Central Bank and IMF upbeat press announcement concerning Greece's latest installment of the bailout package.

It's hard to consider any economic plan which produces joblessness on a scale not seen since the Great Depression as a success, yet that is exactly what the Greek government representatives and their supporters in much of the media are trying to do. There seems little awareness of the degree of social dislocation unemployment of such a scale is bound to produce. instead we are feed a steady diet of statistics and projections which are based on economic modela which do not take into account the conditions on the ground nor the fact that many official economic indicators are little more than educated guesses, the product of a state apparatus that does not even know how many people it employs.

On the other hand whilst hundreds of thousands of pensioners face cuts in their incomes to get permssion to borrow 9 billion euros the Greek government has found 25 billion to give to banks in order to improve their credit worthiness, which in addition to the 26 billion given in 2008 amounts to 15% of GDP or nearly four times the amount Greece spends on education per annum

NB the picture is NOT real but a piece of photoshopped fun. Just a reminder for those who had their sense of humour removed instead of tonsils when young.

Fighting the IMF

IMF Chaos and poverty world tour T-shirt

IMF Chaos and poverty world tour T-shirt, originally uploaded by Teacher Dude's BBQ.

"We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious"

Oscar Wilde

Repent of your debts - Time is running out. IMF

Repent of your debts - Time is running out. IMF, originally uploaded by Teacher Dude's BBQ.

IMF/EU/ECB - Resistance is anything but futile

IMF - Work will set you free, originally uploaded by Teacher Dude's BBQ.

One of the worst aspects of the current economic crisis here in Greece is the way it has sucked the hope out of so many people's lives. The current austerity measures offer nothing in the way of hope for the millions of Greeks on lower incomes whose backs are already up against the wall. This sense of dispair limited to any one group or region but rather has spread like some infectious disease throughout the social spectrum.

Talking to friends the conversation always seems to find its way round to the financial mess the country finds itself in. Everyone I know is worried about the future since the massive economic dislocation we are all going through seems to offer nothing but years of poverty and deprivation, negating decades of hard won progress.

For the young the sense of a future deferred, cancelled, even is strongest. What do they have to look forward to? Unemployment, low wage dead end jobs, a life spent living with their parents? After so many years of study and struggle they are coming to the realisation that much of what they were working towards has disappeared and nothing is being offered to take its place.

Prime minister Giorgos Papandreou may talk about the light at the end of the tunnel but few believe his words as they are the same broken promises that the Greek political class have been manking for years. The same wooden language expressing ideas that no one listens to anymore (not helped by the fact that Papandreou is a monumentally awful public speaker).

The fact is that that the recently elected PASOK party has absolutely no popular mandate for the changes they are making to pension schemes and wages since none of the recent measures were in their pre-election manifesto. Papandreou insists that his party had no idea of the size of the deficit they were inheriting on taking power last year (a contention vehermently dened by the head of the Bank of Greece who says that the head of the opposition knew of the massive overshot in public spending figures). Yet it is a measure of the collapse in public trust in the present political system that few are willing to believe him.

Lacking a mandate the leadership of the PASOK party has resorted to fear and intimidation both within and outside parliament to push through legisaltion demanded by the IMF/EU/EB troika. Any MP refusing to follow the party line faces immediate dismissal form the party whilst outside parliament the presence of riot police has become a permanent fixture of demonstrations of any size.

However, this is just the beginning, the real battles lie ahead of us in September when Greek politics traditionally revive after the lethargy of a long, hot summer. Also the effects of the first wave of cuts in wages, rising unemployment and the fall in income from tourism are likely to combine to form a perfect poltical storm. In the face of such massive unrest it is hard to see how Papadreou is going to maintain party discipline amongst PASOK backbenchers already deeply upset about the route the party is taking. Likewise the party base is unhappy with being identified with such wildly unpopular policies.

In addition there is every likelyhood that the Greece will fail to find enough revenue to fulfill Troika (IMF/EU/ECB) targets and will be forced to borrow even more to pay the bills. Already a second rise in VAT has been imposed on an economy struggling to become competitive, a clear indication that government measures to increase revenue are not proving as effective as Papandreou promised.

With a spiralling debt, massive drop in economic activity and steadily rising unemployment how long is it before Athens is forced to renegotiates its debt load?