'Poverty is the biggest brutality," read the vast banner outside the Greek parliament last Wednesday.
The country was paralysed by strikes and street protests against the further round of austerity demanded by the IMF and EU in return for a second bailout package, a deficit reduction programme twice as large as the tough measures already in place. The price of the biggest-ever IMF intervention includes the sacking of a fifth of Greece's public sector workforce, swingeing tax increases and the biggest, fastest privatisation programme, relative to national output, ever mounted.
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The Observer
