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Hi Talos. Presently I read the Ekathimerini every day, and I'm almost certain they published news of the minimum wage being hiked to 1200 €, with no time frame provided, but the figure was written there. They also refer to rolling pensions back to 2009; this was also in the EUObserver, I believe. I haven't read the political programme, which I imagine is in greek, so I acknowledge things can make more sense there. In any case, Tsipras cannot make good on his promises without sending the primary deficit skywards, even if it is presently even. Doing that and staying in the euro is like having sun at the front door and rain in the garden.

I think the election of Tsipras will be the explosion. But I hope I'm wrong.

Vencit omnia veritas.

by Luis de Sousa (luis[dot]a[dot]de[dot]sousa[at]gmail[dot]com) on Fri Jun 8th, 2012 at 03:08:54 AM EST
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Kathimerini is to the rise of SYRIZA what the MS Media in the US is to the rise of the Latin American Left: partisan opponents. The 1200 Euro figure was in the 2009 program (and even then eventually). So was the 100.000 new jobs in the public sector (though they are badly needed for sure). This is admitted now by all.

These wage-hikes however are private sector wages, not public and if anything could have a positive fiscal result. Also note that a raise in lower pensions can and will be accompanied by a reduction of higher pensions. And I would expect that the confidence of many would be affected positively by putting a floor on the austerity disaster...

So this is all theoretically feasible especially since a SYRIZA government will be the only government in recent memory which will aggressively attempt to collect taxes from the rich... But we're entering a highly chaotic period and there are swarms of butterflies around of the sort that cause hurricanes afar... So, who knows?

The election of Tsipras is IMHO the only hope for Europe. But if SYRIZA fails, well, then there is of course the Nazis. It is getting that ugly, thanks to EU solidarity of the sort we have witnessed in Greece lately: to banks

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake

by talos (mihalis at gmail dot com) on Fri Jun 8th, 2012 at 04:52:55 AM EST
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