Letter to Mr Verhofstadt — A Modest Proposal

Dear Mr. Verhofstadt: By now you must have received several thousand messages of praise for your brilliant speech in the European Parliament. Your speech was full of eloquence, real world specifics, a keen sense of history, and an obvious love for Europe and for Greece.  You even offered to come to Athens to help. My question is, when can you start? Would you consider being Prime Minister of a Greek government of national unity?  It is not as crazy as it sounds.  You hit the nail on the head when you said that the Greek political class is the problem; they are all tainted and corrupt, Syriza is part and parcel of that system, and cannot or will not be any different.  As a people we are deeply divided, part of that is history, part of that must just be genetic, and at this time, to fulfill the program you so clearly and concisely elucidated, someone from the “outside” has to do it. Who better than you? First of all, you have done this job before, as Prime Minister of Belgium, a country with the same population size as Greece and one which is, let’s face it, also divided and with its share of dysfunctions.  You already have a plan, outlined with more depth and specificity than anything the Tsipras government provided.  You have a sense of history, not the cliché allusions to Classical Greece but to the real modern state.  You have an energy and optimism singularly lacking, frankly alien, to the Greek political class. Your being a foreigner need not be a problem.  As a Belgian, you are no doubt fluent in several languages, and the only Greek under 60 who could not communicate with true precision with you is Mr. Tsipras himself.  Anyway, given the way you pronounce Trikoupis and Venizelos (the Real One), you will no doubt make headway with Greek as well.  Being a foreigner is your greatest advantage; you have no local base or bias, and Greeks know instinctively that no Greek today can take command of the ship of state.  That is why the “electoral accident” of Tsipras occurred, because there was no real choice. Until now. Greek history is full of precedents of foreigners helping out or taking the helm at key times in our history, enabling us to rise over our divisions.  I prefer a more recent example.  In 2004 a German coach named Otto Rehhagel led a Greek team against 150 to 1 odds to the European Football Championship.  Our people have the will and the guts; we lack the leadership and the reforms. Come to Greece.  (Don’t worry about the citizenship, this is Greece, we can arrange something!)

Yours sincerely, Alexander Billinis, Co-founder,  Reform Watch Greece

Comrade Tsipras savior of Greece’s Publik Sektor

During a televised interview on 12th June, Alexis Tsipras, the 37 year old leader of the radical left SYRIZA party referred to Greece’s partners in Europe on as “our opponents.” This thug who has proved to be an illiterate uneducated opportunist, the type that spent all his school and university days leading sit-ins and occupations, infringing on other people’s rights, derives from a well-to-do family and never actually having worked anywhere in his life, went straight into “the party” and has spent his entire parliamentary tenure creating problems for the country, thwarting any reform efforts,  encouraging violent riots and throwing smart-arse juvenile comments into the political arena meant to enthrall the impressionable and less intelligent.

Like millions of other Greeks within the country and in the Diaspora, I am thoroughly ashamed that someone of this man’s caliber has been “elevated” as a representative, or “leader” of Greece and the Greek people. His policies are ridiculous, those that are actually articulated that is, depending on which version is released by which hermaphrodite SYRIZA constituent clan, surreal in fact. One of his parliamentary candidates in Corinth just resigned in protest, stating that Greece will not last more than a few hours under such reckless leadership. Tsipras has now even gone to the Financial Times with an op-ed to try to improve his image as a reasonable negotiating partner.  Hogwash.

Anyone who has any real knowledge of what is going on in Greece at present would be aware that the only reason this party (SYRIZA) has gone from 4% to up to 30% or more in less than 12 months is because a large part of the spoiled and corrupt public sector, criminal unionists, cronies of the former PASOK (which has been basically cleansed through this) as well as even many right wingers from Nea Dimokratia have thrown their support solidly behind SYRIZA because they believe Tsipras will save them from going where they deserve to go…the rubbish bin.

Sadly, it seems that history will probably remember Greece as a deeply Balkan country that never really evolved from its Ottoman past and was destroyed by its useless public “servants”, corrupt trade unionists and state-dependent cronies, thanks to the opportunistic political operative called Tsipras. There may well be the need to reclassify Greece in global brokerage house lingo from a “developed economy” (if its institutions ever truly graduated to the EU level from the “emerging market” category) to a “submerging market.”  Tsipras should get two gold stars for his good work there.

EU Commission Task Force for Greece — Initial quarterly report

EU Task Force for Greece —- Initial Quarterly Report

Entire report here, just click.  We will make these reports available here as soon as they are published.

From our archives (2010!) — Dear Troika

This article originally appeared in the Athens News, and elsewhere (Blogs), in late November 2010, at the time Greece was awaiting disbursement of the third tranche of the original Troika bailout package.  From our perspective, had the Troika played reasonable and focused hardball with the Papandreou government back then, Greece would not have had to suffer two “voluntary” debt restructurings and numerous other indignities.  We are especially interested in how little of the reform work discussed in the article has actually been completed.  The good news, at least, is that a reasonable amount has started…..finally.  Read and assess the progress yourself.

http://www.athensnews.gr/issue/13419/34428