Moody’s announced the degradation of the
government and not of the country, the memorandum or the banks and, as it appeared from Monday, the message was received by Maximou, which is now expected to shift more weight on its attempts to create political polarization within the country, and less towards the broad consensus with the political leaders or the battle ahead of the crucial decisions of Summits for the measures to resolve the debt crisis. The actual problem revealed by the thunderous degradation is the inadequacy of the government to promote bold reforms of developmental texture. Beyond any expediency or humble interest of which one can criticize the surprise announcement, the foreign firm gave a clear position that it does not dispute the need for austerity measures, such as those taken by the government or the adequacy of banks, but the fact that the government is delaying or «softly» applying them and without really believing them, the development policies it so often preaches about.
Among other things, Moody’s stressed in their announcement that they "still see major risks in implementing the measures to reform the Greek government and, even if most bills are approved, the progress made in implementing the measures is not sufficient to reduce the concerns of the firm".
The degradation is not the maximum for bank deposits and bonds, as it is made clear in the announcement, while it still leaves space even for an upgrade of the evaluation, if the denationalizations move faster.
At this point it shows the way the government must follow without it being able to do so: large denationalizations for foreign investments as troika is asking but the government is stalling… It is no coincidence that, apart from a vague reference by Paboukis for the «green» future of Elliniko, no one yet has presented the actual business, , the Arab financiers are supposed to do in Greece, and which will put the country back on the map of international investments.
So, besides the sacrifices it does not seem clear when the celebrated – for two years now – «restart of the Greek economy» will take place. Instead, the government seems – according to its evaluators – insufficient to compensate or to combine the fiscal bleeding (which also leads to a reduction in GDP and tax revenue), with measures that will drive foreign capital and the Greek economy in its whole.
What every Greek says
From this point of view the firm said what every Greek is seeing and saying: nothing is moving, this is pointless.
Maybe then, there has not been a louder attack on the government for the lack of policy to attract foreign investment, which is even justified by the economy team arguing that «why would foreigners come in, when even the Greeks are drawing their money from banks?». We may never know, since we never tried – when we had time…
Under these circumstances, the lending test of Tuesday with the six-month treasury bills passes in the shadow of political fermentations and developments, which will increasingly define from now on the future of the Greek economy.
By Kostis Piantzos
SOURCE: PROTO THEMA
