International Monetary Fund and Economic Catastrophe

Berlin Brussels: It is extraordinary that an economic catastrophe on the scale of the Great Depression has been visited on a country in 21st-century Europe, not because of the neglect of the policymaking elite but under their direct supervision – and indeed under the guise of a bailout . So doctrinaire have Berlin and Brussels been in imposing neoliberal strictures on Greece – not just deep budget cuts in the midst of recession but the dismantling of collective bargaining and the privatisation of state assets – that the end result has been economic misery and social division; even the International Monetary Fund has sometimes seemed to balk at their hardline approach, according to The Guardian. The banks that led recklessly in the runup to the crash were made all but whole; Greek families have paid the price. Yet the terrible suffering of its people over the past five years shows that the single currency is a fundamentally misconceived project. As Amartya Sen suggested recently, the management of the crisis has proceeded through unilateral decisions in secluded financial corridors , instead of transparent, democratic politics. Membership Event:Guardian Newsroom: Should Greece leave the Euro Dear Heather I am the mutt cast to argue against what is the British common sense, ranging from Ukip through to the economics pages of the Observer and the Guardian, and steeling myself for derision from all sides! Nonetheless I don’t think, even while sharing your view that dark forces are on the march in Europe, that the euro is the source of every European political and economic ill, that designing workable currency regimes for a continent of 28 very open countries is easy, or that Greece would have had a relatively softer time had it kept the drachma. What was meant to be a solidaristic, progressive project, sharing the best of Europe economic and social model across the continent, has instead ended up stoking nationalism and mutual suspicion — and, in Greece case, despair. (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.