We stayed 3 night in Athens, so we can't claim to be experts in things Athenian. For expert advice, I turned to no other than the hairdresser who owns the business next to our hotel. He delivered a terrible haircut, but his engaging manner was well worth his full charge.
He asked what I did for a living and I said, "Retired". "What was your job before retirement?" "I worked for a bank." "No one is perfect!"
He asked if this was my first trip to Greece. "No. I was here 43 years ago." "That early. How did you get here?" "By air. I flew in." "I reckon those blimps weren't give a fair chance." I knew I was going to enjoy my haircut.
He wanted to talk about the economic problems of Greece. He recognised the issue being caused by a bankrupt country trying to prop up bankrupt banks. He acknowledged the structural weakness where banks benefited from prolific government spending and political parties took the easy political path of spending as if there was no tomorrow. Voters like that. But he allocated a lot of the blame on EU bureaucrats who informed Greece that prolific spending was good in the climate of that time.
He became most agitated when talking about the solution imposed by the EU. Sure, the current solution keeps the most number of banks solvent. It retrieves most of the indebtedness without default. It keeps the Euro currency respectable. But who is paying the price? He talked of his father who worked for 40 years in a good engineering job. He saved his money, invested in shares and property and had arranged a comfortable retirement. Now, he can't sell his shares or property. He has no cash flow. He has to depend on his son whose business is in trouble. (I suspect his father may have provided some backing for the hairdressing business.) "What has my father done to deserve such a poor future?" He talked of university graduates. "For the next 5 years, none of them will find suitable jobs in Greece. They will move to other countries to find employment... and Greece will be the poorer for it." What kind of solution is that?"
I wanted to know what happened to all the money that the government borrowed. Who benefited from that borrowing. My hairdresser reckons it was used to allow governments to be lazy. Instead of managing social security payments, the government just let things slide. When a particularly influential group promoted its favourite development scheme, the government said OK. Mistakes were made...not so much by the people, but by politicians and bureaucrats. The people did not demand lax administration of social security. They did not demand the building of uneconomic infrastructure. Yet it is the people who suffer.
On Easter Sunday, we saw a gathering of some 2000 protesters in Syntagma Square. They weren't radicals. They had one or two signs between the lot of people them. They didn't know what slogans to chant. My guess is, they didn't know what solution they wanted. My guess is that all they wanted to communicate was that the current solution was hurting and they thought it was unjust.
My hairdresser says that Greeks know that circumstances change. They can bear hardship! What gets them annoyed is when they are required to bear the burden for mistakes they had no part in deciding.
I think banks and Germany will remain unpopular in Greece for the next 5 years.
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