‘Austerity = poverty, adjustment = exploitation, growth = private profit’

Posted by clnews _Featured_, Economy, Videos Thursday, August 23rd, 2012

Battered and bruised by austerity, Athens has begged the EU for ‘breathing space’. Regardless of whether Greece is given more time, its tactic to fight debt will remain the same: aggressive austerity, privatization and cuts. However, Andrew Gavin Marshall from the Centre of Research on Globalization thinks those reforms will do much more harm than good. Said Marshall:

“If you really want to understand the crises in Greece, you have to translate the political language that we hear all of the time… There are three words in economic crises which are used most commonly: austerity, adjustment (or reform), and growth.  If you simply take the rhetoric, follow the policy, and look at the effects, you can actually translate the language into what it actually means.  So, austerity means impoverishment; adjustment means exploitation;  and growth means private profits.”

Featured image by Petros Giannakouris/Associated Press