By William K. Black
Bloomington, MN: January 19, 2015
In my January 18, 2015 column, I explained that German Prime Minister Angela Merkel’s sweetest triumph was successfully extorting George Papandreou, Greece’s Prime Minister, head of the Greek Socialist Movemnt (PASOK), and President of the Socialist International, to inflict austerity and a war on workers’ wages on the Greek people. I quoted a passage from the Papandreou administration’s May 3, 2010, “Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies” (the Papandreou Plan) agreeing to the European Commission’s (EC) austerity and anti-worker demands that was made part of The EC’s Occasional Papers No. 61 “The Economic Adjustment Programme for Greece” (May 2010).
In this column I explain how radically right-wing the Papandreou Plan was and the completeness with which it embraced rather than resisted the troika’s theoclassical nostrums that forced Greece, Italy, and Spain into gratuitous second Great Depressions. In Greece’s case, the Merkel Great Depression has proven more severe and longer in duration than the Great Depression of 80 years ago. The EC’s Economic Adjustment Programme for Greece description of the Papandreou Plan was accurate. The Greek leaders “strongly own and support the [austerity] programme policies and objectives.”
