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May 18, 2012
Greeks go to the polls on 17 June after the previous vote on 6 May proved inclusive and no political party was able to form a coalition government. A temporary cabinet is in place.
The new election is probably a referendum on the euro and it appears that while Greeks do not want the harsh austerity imposed by the troika (the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund) to secure a €130bn lifeline in March and avoid default--- most of them want to stay in the euro.
David Pope
Greece is being pushed out of the eurozone by the politics of austerity and it desperately needs measures for stimulating growth if it is to stay in the eurozone. Austerity alone will not solve the eurozone debt crisis.
Mariana Mazzucato argues that:
The eurozone will grow only once weaker countries are allowed to make the strategic investments Germany has. There is much talk about the need for internal rebalancing, to increase the competitiveness of the deficit-burdened south relative to the surplus-blessed north, but this is a limited view. What is required is not that wages fall in Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain, but that they make investments that increase their productivity – an impossibility with austerity-driven policies.
If growth is really on the agenda, then the focus should be on the productive investments needed to rebalance Europe, and mechanisms that allow that to happen.
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This will be an election conducted in an atmosphere of threat unprecedented since the 1930s. All sorts of threats will be made in an effort to terrify the Greek electorate to vote in a Govt. prepared to continue the austerity programme.
These threats will, of course, be thinly disguised as "predictions" of what will happen to them if they vote the "wrong" way.