The Greek Workshop of Debt and the Failure of the European Project

The Collapse and Transformation of the Greek Party System

“…More than 6000 individuals were known to owe more than E150,000 to the state, amounting to a total of over E30 billion, while Greece's total budget was about E23 billion (Fouskas and Dimoulas 2012). After 2000, this model gained momentum again and provided Greece with the second-highest growth rates in the Eurozone (around 3.7 percent) until 2008.…”

“…This transformation led to a specific interconnection between certain capitalist class fractions and the Greek state. Those fractions acted as go-betweens for foreign companies in domestic and foreign trade as well as in money markets (Fouskas and Dimoulas 2012). Additionally, these new class fractions facilitated the inflow of international, mainly European, capital.…”

Fiscal Discipline Through Internal Devaluation and Discourses of Rent-Seeking: The Case of the Crisis in Greece

“…39 Furthermore, Fouskas and Dimoulas refer to the "parasitic role of comprador/rentier-cum-financial capital," consisting of "Greek capitalists [that] transformed themselves from petty industrialists to go-betweens and comprador financiers under state protection and tolerance, enjoying remarkable tax privileges." 40 This class flourished thanks to cheap private borrowing and credit-led growth to the detriment of several sectors of the real economy, and therefore had a strong interest in the reproduction of a debt-driven economy. The continuation of unequal exchange/trade relations went hand in hand with the transformation of the Greek upper class into an intermediary between international financial capital and the clientelist state, leading the country to have a deeper dependence on credit.…”

Exploring the impact of employment policy measures in the context of crisis: The case of Greece

“…Employment policy costs in Greece before the current crisis were minor, absorbing less than 1 per cent of annual GDP (0.7 per cent of GDP was spent on benefits and less than 0.25 per cent of GDP was spent on active labour market measures), and the number of beneficiaries was less than one fifth of the registered unemployed population . The financing of unemployment benefits was insufficient but this did not create widespread precariousness because of the offsets provided to the populace through extended public debt and the very high gains of their private savings on the Athens Stock Exchange (Fouskas and Dimoulas, ). From 1985 until 2008, there were nearly 35,000 beneficiaries of active labour market measures per year, representing 10 to 12 per cent of the registered unemployed.…”