We need to talk about unemployment

At the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Council of Ministers in Paris on Wednesday, Greek Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras challenged the institution’s forecast that Greece will remain in recession next year, which would mean a seventh straight year of contraction. Stournaras thinks the OECD will be proved wrong. There isn’t a Greek in the world who doesn’t hope he will be proved right.

The OECD’s recent Economic Outlook contains some alarming messages for Greece, messages that are in contrast with the recent wave of positivity from the government and upbeat assessments from the media domestically and abroad. The Paris-based organisation does not see a return to growth in 2014 but predicts a further economic contraction of 1.2 percent, a gap from Stournaras’s projections that translates into about 3.6 billion euros of economic output. It goes as far as suggesting that additional financing from the EU/IMF program will be required for Greece so automatic stabilizers are allowed to kick in if the recession turns out to be deeper than initially anticipated.

Drinking from the bitter cup

Out of all the visits to my homeland during the crisis, the trip at the end of summer of 2011 was the one that gave me the sense that Greece’s social fabric was close to tearing point. In June of that summer, the protests of thousands of Greeks outside Parliament were met with extensive repression and police brutality. The scenes of clouds of tear gas remained in people’s minds and the distinctive smell lingered for those who participated in the protests. It was evident that Papandreou’s government had lost all contact with society.

In early September of that year, the disagreement over how to rectify the fact that the deficit had deviated from set targets led to the hasty departure of the troika, Greece was entering a long period of uncertainty and that summer was the most tumultuous period of the crisis in social terms.