You're gonna love this, I know I did...

It's an article by OECD, dating back to 1996, concerning the political management of economic adjustment programs, full of best practices wisdom gained during the imposition and implementation of such programs in Africa and South America...

I can't find much in this article that doesn't inform, right to the tiniest of details, the practices, the strategy and the tactics of the Government of George Papandreou since elected in 2009...
Looks like a carbon-copy almost or a post-description of political developments in Greece in Europe in recent years

It must be kind of like the "political marketing for dummies" manual of present day governments...

I knew, I could deduce, that political thought, vision and sincerity had left the ruling party politicians around the western world, but this just goes a long way to demonstrate the prevalence of marketing over politics

Just read it
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/24/24/1919076.pdf

What about the economic feasability of an adjustment program? Is it not too late for sincerity?
I'm not saying the Papandreou gang aren't useless scoundrels but, putting myself in their shoes, I wouldn't want to be sincere. I'd probably want to pretend I'm the creditors' best friend while provoking chaos.

Rather than "demonstrate the prevalence of marketing over politics" (meaning what exactly?), this document shows that the OECD assumes that governments are working for an international oligarchy and will behave as ennemies of the people.
That's the weakness of the document: it says that "[the government's] prime objective is usually to remain in power". But why would self-serving governments not turn to populism instead of the OECD recommendations? In this game, the player most willing to lose has the most leverage. Why would nationalists then put the stability of their government above the national interest?
The document makes other revealing assumptions like "strikes are sectional movements by nature". In its fantasy world, it seems there's no such thing as patriots.

Greece has no mineral wealth that can pay its government's debts so, without law and order, that debt is worthless. Mercenaries couldn't collect interest payments.
If law and order was seriously threatened, rational self-serving creditors would therefore negociate away whatever it takes to get the situation under control if they felt the government was on their side. What other option do they have? Better get cents on the dollar than nothing.

I haven't read the document, and I am not going to, mostly because its long and very boring.

Just to add my thoughts on the matter.

Greece should have been cast adrift as soon as the rest of the Eurozone realised just how much debt it had, how negative the economy was, how negative future growth looked to be and how little Greece could really do to sort itself out.

A couple of points.

1.) Greece should never have been allowed to join the Euro because of its financial situation as well as the rest of its economy in general, it was never strong enough to be part of the Euro. This is not a specific criticism of any particular government, but of many governments fiscal and monetary policies over decades, the simple fact that Several Greek governments lied and "cooked the books" to join the Euro is a very damning piece of evidence - and for what.?

2.) However the aforementioned Greek governments had no need to do such things at all, it was not in the long-term interests of Greece to join the Euro simply because of the very strong boom/bust nature of Greece. The fact that Eurozone countries cant change their interest rates, re-value their currency vs others is a severe problem as we can all see today, Germany is doing OK, and has done rather well over the last 3-years, other countries have not. If Greece had never joined the Euro, Greece would be in a far better (but still bad) position, and so would the rest of the world.

As for the debt, there are 2 stories in the news, but people only seem to pay attention to one of them and that is the "new bailout", people somehow seem to skip the other bit of news that 100 Billion Euro's of debt, just add them together to get a slightly more realistic idea of the problem, Greece has just been given another 230 Billion Euro's...... It will be interesting to see how long it will be before there is another debt write-off (essentially giving away more money), or another Bailout, or whether they will eventually let Greece out of their noose.

Personally when I heard about the problems Greece was having and the lies they had told to be part of the Euro, I thought that they should have been told to get their printing presses dusted and start printing Drachma's again. As mentioned before this was for Greece, and the Greek people as much as it is for the rest of the Eurozone and indeed the world.

May I also add my sympathies with the Greek people who were persuaded years ago that being a member of the Eurozone would improve the lives of the Greek people, that was not so much a "lie" as it was deception by only telling part of the story. Yes being a user of the Euro would give the Greek people and government a very low borrowing cost, this improved Greece and its inhabitants lives a lot and quickly, however, when the proverbial "shit and fan" come together people realise the truth. The truth is that the Euro was essentially a huge credit card for Greece and its people, now its time to repay that credit card bill and no one has the money to pay it - oops. The rest of the Eurozone countries will have to pay the bill - mostly the Germans - which is fine by me, financially speaking Germany won the second world war, now its payback


Andy

A quick update.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17034677

It looks like Germany (and the rest of the Eurozone countries) are wanting to make certain that Greece is really going to pay back this bailout (unlike the last one) and that means even tougher Austerity than the Greek people are already enduring as part of the agreement for Greece to get this bailout.

As mentioned before I feel sorry for the Greek people, and to a lesser extent the Germans (and others) who are having to pay for Greece's financial woes.


Andy