Um texto escrito por um amigo grego que vive e tem uma empresa em Atenas. Um favor: se alguém se sentir compelido a comentar, se puder, faça-o em inglês. Obrigado.
By: “Gyro Boy”
There is no money left. It’s gone. Get used to it. You can go march and riot all you want but , but it won’t come back. It’s been neatly tucked away in Swiss bank accounts and off-shore companies, mostly by the same people who were supposed to be managing it for all of us. It’s a familiar story here in Greece. And it’s been happening for decades. So much money poured into Greece in the recent past, and we have so little to show for it. Greece owes more money than can ever be paid back and yet you would never guess it looking at it’s infrastructure. In Athens, there are so many bumps and potholes in the roads that it feels like you are on a perpetual roller coaster whenever you drive. Sidewalks for walking do not exist or are blocked by parked cars and motorcycles or trash bins or junk or trees or a million other things. And oh yeah, there are no rules, or better yet, no enforcement of the rules. In almost anything in Greece. It is the land of the spoiled brat phenomenon. Most Greeks are honest and decent people, but there is a minority that is unbelievably arrogant, pushy and self-entitled. Because there are hardly any consequences people are free to do whatever they want, and usually with no consequences whatsoever. This starts at a young age and is engrained in the culture, especially for boys. But whatever Greeks are, and however the media wants to portray them, they don’t deserve this slow hell strangulation. No one does.
So here we are sitting on this giant mound of shit wondering if we will ever get back to “normal”. No we won’t! is my answer. We won’t because it’s all a game. Oh no, we spent too much and now we need to be punished. Give me a fucking break. We didn’t spend anything more than we were given. And there always risks in loaning money. The kickbacks Greece doled out were huge as were their commissions to Goldman Sachs to cook up our numbers to get us in to the EU. The problem is that not enough of the money got to the common person. But they expect the common person to now foot the bill. Fuck You they yell back, marching in the city center enraged! This is not right! This is complete and utter bullshit!!
I’ve fired over 25 people in the last 6 months. The ones that are left I owe 2 months wages and are in a constant state of rebellion. I am shutting down, slowly but surely, and I’m not sure how it’s going to end. Will we end up a small company of 5-10 people? Or will we simply go out of business? What a fucking waste of 20 years of my life. But there are no other options. I owe so much fucking money! I never owed money before. This never ending feeling of dread. I wake up with it, and I go to sleep with it. It.s like having a terminal disease and knowing your days are numbered. What the fuck??? How did we get in this mess? Sales are down 35% this year. Same as last year, and I don’t see a reason why it will be any different next year. I can handle that, but I owe so much money it would take me 5 years of healthy profits to pay back. 5 years! And I was considered well off 3 years ago. Now we are all the same. Now we’re all in the same pot of shit looking at each other stupefied as the temperature rises and we get close to the boiling point.
O Insurgente 
Dear friend,
I feel your burden. Like you, we were enticed to huge public works on the grounds of being for the major interest of everyone. In the name of that fuzzy thing that some people call the “common good”. Here’s reality hitting back on our faces. Dream what you want, at the end of the day it is reality that comes back to haunt us.
Contrary to you, though, we’ve seen some of that unproductive investment spring to life. We do have airports and shiny new schools, packed with nothing but thin air. Buildings, cars and highways that will never the liquidated and that result in a burden for the current and future generations.
We too, will be living through the hell that is currenly Greece. We hope for brighter days but that won’t happen until a major outbreak takes places. It’s time we get our things straight and fight for more liberty and less government. Only then will we, altogether now, be free.
Dear Gyro,
I feel your pain. In Portugal, life is getting harder everyday and all we see are those damn politicians riding their top of the line Mercedes and Audis from irrelevant meeting to another even more irrelevant meeting with their cheerful faces that seem to show they are happy with their lifes, while the rest of us work harder from day to day to earn less money every month. I don´t see an end to this austerity and i also don´t see a future until we get rid of the people who got us in this mess in the first place.
What´s happening in your country worries me a lot. I see radical left and right wings gaining a lot of popular support and that means less freedom, more government power, more debt and more socialism and poverty. Austerity is not a solution, but not paying your debts isn´t either. What i think that Portugal and Greece should do is reducing the size of the State gradually until a level that it can be supported the tax revenue. Of course this is wishful thinking because of 2 reasons:
1. The number of people that depend on the state and of political parties to live, won´t allow this to happen. They represent the biggest lobby that both you and i have in our countries.
2. Politicians are not that good at math, they spend what they have and what they don´t have, because it´s not their money and their purpose is to win elections and to help themselves, not the people.
The only real solution i see is a revolution with the establishment of a new democracy, a real one, where we don´t have dictatorships of 4 years.
I´m 28, i am hard-line libertarian and now facing an identity crisis because what i see everyday in Portugal makes me think that i have nothing to do with most of my fellow citizens who just want more EU money, more socialism and some of them still think that money falls from the sky.
But it´s not the end of the world. Most of us portuguese and greeks will have to migrate to fast-growing countries outside of Europe for a few years. Eventually it will get better, it all does.
Best wishes, António
«There is no money left. It’s gone. Get used to it. » Excuse me for asking, but where is it gone to?
Ana, read right after that, he tells us where it went
Por Gonçalo
http://notaslivres.blogspot.pt/2012/11/o-meu-orcamento-para-2013.html
http://notaslivres.blogspot.com/2012/11/medida-6-criacao-de-grupo-de-pressao.html
Gonçalo, não leve a mal mas os seus comentarios são demasiado extensos e um pouco off topic para este post. Ficam aqui os links e com certeza os leitores que estiverem interessados visitarão o seu blog.
Cumprimentos
Sorry, Vidinha you’re wrong. Try to read this blog (which is not a borg entity) with a little less prejudice. I don’t know anyone at O Insurgente who disagrees with that sentence. Big business and too big to fail are not exactly something we cherish. Far from it
Dear Gyro,
For whatever it is worth I wrote a long time ago why the IMF/Troika therapy does not work in Greece (http://marques-mendes.blogspot.pt/2011/01/why-imf-therapy-is-not-working-in.html). Your politicians need to confront the Troika with an ultimatum: either you change course or we will declare a moratorium on all debt (private and official) but we will not leave the Euro. After all if most of your money is already outside the country why not close down your banks and use only foreign banks. As the old saying goes: if you owe a small amount to a bank and cannot pay you have a problem but if you owe a lot to a bank and cannot pay the bank has the problem. All the best for you and your business.
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