Dear reader,
the author here has to confess that he is currently restraining himself not to write several articles per day whenever another idiocy of the eurozone is brought to his attention.
One short blog entry needs to focus on the current approach of EU politicians who are obviously trying to combine their 'skills' of kicking the cans down the roads with purely financial matters such as transferring ever larger portions of money out of their own (taxpayers) coffers to Greece in order to help the hopeless budget situation over there. In order to keep a overstaffed Greek public sector afloat, while in the meantime the Greek private sector such as tourism industry has to listen to ever weaker foreign demand and has to sack many of its employees.
Recently Dutch NOS TV showed some impressions of declining Greek tourism industry by highlighting the situation of a small island near Athens. One owner of a small hotel there was reporting that after a decline of 40% in 2011 business, they have to cope now with another decline of 60% this year because tourists stay away because of riots and perceived aggressive climate towards foreigners in Greece showing on their TV news. So far the owner of that hotel received only 14 reservations until season's end and of course during that never before experienced slump in bookings it is out of the question to employ some other workers at their hotel.
Other media reports from Germany seem to confirm this trend of Germans avoiding Greece for their next holidays although so far they were the largest group of foreigners to visit the country in the past. Many out of fear they could face aggression in Greece because of sentiments of anger due to current crisis.
Yesterday Mr Tsipras of Greek Syriza party visited the German capital Berlin in order to meet his German counterpart of German so called 'left party' and among other things he demanded to support Greek tourism sector and to visit Greece. Well among the many more unrealistic demands he expressed that really is an idea worth elaborating on:
So the Greek tourism sector is the main source of income for Greece, so why on earth did no EU representative call for PR measures paid out of the EU budget in order to promote EU citizens not to spend their holidays in destinations far from home but in Greece ? How about a campaign of TV ads airing in all member states of the EU ? What is wrong with the idea of using instruments of market economy instead of paying out taxpayer's money in order to keep wrong sectors afloat ? Such a campaign would cost only millions and could inspire capital influx for Greece worth billions of Euros ! Even better when combining such ads with some kind of 'lottery' by offering e.g. for every 10.000th bookings of at least 2 weeks vacation a small European car worth some 10.000 € ? Maybe some smaller incentives to be handed out for 1000th, 2500th vacationer etc. Anyone disagreeing that a flourishing business sector will work to reduce budget related headaches? It'll work even in two ways at once: reducing unemployment benefit spendings and increasing tax revenues. And tourism will do its part to reduce current account deficit as well.
As the whole Euro crisis so far it is once again a failure of leadership doing the right things based on simple economics instead based of high tax revenues diverted to cover up other blunders caused by non market behavior. This week this lack of leadership was also expressed by Chinese officials and it is a real pity that they have it right again this time. The whole crisis going back to the introduction of the common currency to the present day where 'solutions' are being discussed at seemingly countless summits which only cost billions of Euros and are only good for postponing looming catastrophe for another few month.
Another story of idiocy concerning Greece is the obvious lack of interest to catch those Greek tax dodgers who have fled to the various safe havens in thee north, not all of them are outside the EU. And even when Switzerland was the targeted promised land for those individuals who packed their treasure chests and left Greece in order to ride out the financial storm awaiting Greece in the near future. Other EU member states did achieve bilateral tax treaties with Swiss authorities in order to claw back some of the sums which were withheld to their state's tax offices. It is rather insane that e.g. Germany took ambitious steps to get some 'smaller fish', (German citizens) in order to get additional tax revenues which then were redirected towards Greece in order to fill the gaps of those 'big fish' (Greeks) just left the country for Germany or Switzerland or other European safe havens. This is what the author here calls ultimate idiocy !
note:
some references to this story will be added later
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