Saturday, October 20, 2012

Greece: Austerity Destroying the Economy

Unemployment in Greece hit a record 25.1 per cent in July, with more than 1000 jobs lost every day over the past year.

54.2 per cent of young people are unable to find work, latest official figures reveal.

Because of forced austerity cuts that are linked to so-called bailouts to lower the country's budget deficits, it is certain that unemployment in Greece will be head even higher.

A spiral of deliberately slashed demand that is impoverishing the most vulnerable people in Greece has driven the economy into what economists usually describe as a Depression. The same prescription that was enforced in the 1930s is working the same way it did back then.

To illustrate the extent of Greece's recession, the out-of-work figure rose from 24.8 per cent in June. In July 2008, a year before Greece's financial crisis broke, there were about 364,000 registered unemployed.

"This is a very dramatic result of the recession," Angelos Tsakanikas, head of research at Greece's IOBE economic research foundation, he did not expect employment to pick up for at least a year.

The BBC's correspondent in Athens, Mark Lowen, said: "The figures have bolstered the anti-austerity argument here, giving fuel to those who believe the entire strategy of Greece's international lenders is wrong, and that pressure for ever more cuts is pushing the country to breaking point and stunting growth.

"They point to the fact that before Greece was bailed out in April 2010, and began its austerity drive, unemployment stood at just 11.8%," he said.

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