Guardian
February 12, 2012
Six inches from the riot policeman's shield outside the Greek parliament last Friday, a tall, pale boy was shouting at a man who could have been his uncle: "It's your generation that brought us to this point, but it's mine that has to pay for it. You have to take responsibility for what's happening here." Across the road, a middle-aged woman roared at the line of cops: "Traitors! Collaborators! We're Greeks. You're beating up your mothers and your sisters." Another, her head wrapped in a pink scarf, screamed at the parliament: "They've drunk our blood, we don't have anything to eat. They've sold us to the Germans. My child owes money, they're about to take her house. I hope they all get cancer." All of them were in an ecstasy of rage, reluctant to go home and lose that temporary release.
As I write, the Greek parliament is preparing to vote on the bond swap agreed with the country's private creditors and on the new deal with the EU and the IMF, which would lend the country €130bn in exchange for cuts that slice the last little bits of flesh from the economy – including a 22% reduction in the minimum wage and 150,000 public sector job losses by 2016. Without the deal, Greece will default by March; with it, the country will sink into a still deeper depression, with no end in sight. In a televised effort to rally the country behind yet more austerity, the finance minister, Evangelos Venizelos, laid out a blunt choice between sacrifices and worse sacrifices, humiliation and still deeper humiliation, if Greece should default and leave the eurozone.
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