It began when, in a series of policy papers, a teacher in a village on the Dodecanese island of Kos forced a course of exorbitant public employee retirement packages on the state. A priest in Zakynthos instituted a raise in the age of retirement, and a homeless person in Thessaloniki negotiated a high unemployment insurance rate. To finance these terrible measures, a consortium of the children of Aegean fishermen fraudulently hit up divers banks for enormous loans while their parents were busily withholding their fiscal largesse from the tax bureaucracy. Coffee shop owners negotiated a minimum wage of (for adult workers)
Through a system of collusion, corruption, and above all a gross misuse of their staggering powers as private citizens, the middle and lower classes have formulated and executed Greece's economic policy over the past decade.
In the meantime, government employees, lender institutions, and the foreign commentariat urged the populace to moderate their demands and accumulate less debt. Bankers refused to proffer monies which could not be repaid until their entire family (up to relatives in the third degree) was kidnapped at gunpoint. The upper socioeconomic class meanwhile declared its property, work and investment income, with thrilling veracity and an overarching and steadfast sense of its duty toward the polity as a whole.
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THEREFORE, to save the country and future generations from summary collapse, we must plumb the endless fiscal resources of all except the upper-class-earners who (although now impoverished and suffering) have done their duty by the country all along.
In order to do this, the salaries of public employees have been cut in half, benefits (luxurious frills such as health insurance) withdrawn entirely whether through purposeful policy or neglectful non-payment, and why private companies must leave Greece for greener shores. The guiltiest 22% of the Greek population is now jobless and the guiltiest 33% now lives below the poverty line.
But the harm which these brigands have done extends beyond the shores of privately-owned Greek islands. They should bow their head in shame, too, at the havoc they have wrought in the finances not only of their own fiscal and political elite, but also in the finances of the fiscal and political elite in the entire European Union and banks everywhere.
The upper management of the Deutsche Bank and Angela Merkel, have been so impoverished by Greek hotel receptionists' non-payment of the national debt that they are living in cardboard boxes on the streets of Frankfurt and Berlin. They dine in soup kitchens set up by their states and rely upon the generosity of more fortunate relatives and private charities. Through anxiety for the welfare of Europe, and their zealous wish to set the right economic course for all, they have not slept in years.
TOUCHED to the heart by their plight, German citizens are voluntarily and personally handing over our incomes to our Hellenic counterparts, even though we are thereby reducing our gross domestic product to such a painful extent that in two more months we will have reached a North Korean standard of living.
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Against the mafioso Greek small businessmen, alas, we can still do nothing; nothing, too against the corruption and tax evasion which are still bubbling up like swamp effluvia among the pecuniary bigwigs and influence-peddlers in homeless shelters as well as the foyers of private charities, etc., across the country. Nothing will do but for the noble Nordic businessmen to construct, from the foundation up, that Eiffel Tower of integrity, duty, and humility which characterizes our own economic system — in the hills and beaches of Greece.
We must look to the ancients who once carried Greece to such glory — and bid the Greeks emulate the examples of such as Socrates, who got by without a swimming pool, and who — upon being told that he was bringing about the summary moral collapse of his own society — duly imbibed his cup of poison hemlock so as to get in nobody's way.
Fin.
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