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The 13th Labour of Hercules: Inside the Greek Crisis, by Yannis Palaiologos
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Since the revelation of its massive hidden deficit in late 2009, Greece has been at the centre of the world's attention. Observers around the globe have watched with morbid fascination as the country has repeatedly flirted with political and financial chaos, as one failed rescue programme has followed another, as extremism spread and its official creditors bickered about the causes of its inability to recover.
How did a prosperous, seemingly advanced economy in the heart of Europe collapse so precipitously? And why has it proved so hard for it to stand on its feet again? These are the central questions running through The 13th Labour of Hercules. Through a series of compelling stories - from a cancer sufferer depending on charitable health care, to the Finance Minister charged with clearing up tax evasion, to the union bosses fighting mass unemployment and the workings of a prejudiced, corrupt government - it brings to life the social, cultural and political forces that left Greece defenceless when the global economic hurricane came, and the vicious interplay between economic depression, institutional failure and social breakdown since the country's Great Crisis began.
- Sales Rank: #3134356 in Books
- Published on: 2015-12-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .75" w x 5.25" l, .70 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 288 pages
About the Author
YANNIS PALAIOLOGOS is a features reporter for Kathimerini newspaper in Athens, Greece. He grew up and went to school in Athens, and studied PPE and post-graduate philosophy at New College, Oxford.
Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
It takes a jounalist!
By Athan
This is now my favorite book about the Greek crisis.
The reason is simple: there’s no macro here. There's no analysis of debt to GDP ratio dynamics or growth projections, no theories about optimum currency areas, no excuses regarding internal devaluation versus external, no mention of the debt supercycle and no attempt to somehow connect the Greek crisis to the crash of 2008. Also, the author tries to keep it simple: big words like “subsidiarity,” technical terms like “quantitative easing” and jargon like “Target 2” are avoided because they are not deemed necessary. (I did spot Target 2 once, I must admit)
Instead, this collection of case studies serves to demonstrate that to fix Greece you need to get down and dirty and understand the micro. The economics, it turns out, flows if you understand the personal interests, entitlements, aspirations and frustrations of the myriads of agents who form the economy and the history of the manner in which these interests, entitlements, aspirations and frustrations arose.
There are heroes here as well as villains. The 13th Labour is not a whitewash followed by a shrug. Moreover, the author is not only prepared to explore the possibility that the heroes might be spinning their wheels in the mud, he’s also prepared to entertain the possibility that the villains might have an admissible point of view as well.
The arch-NIMBYist mayor of Keratea is not what you’d call a model citizen, but his attitude can be explained if you understand that he considers himself part of a short-changed ethnic minority.
Conversely, all-round genius Diomidis Spinellis who attempted to bring the tax authority into the 21st century eventually realized that his bosses did not actually understand how successful he’d be in unearthing tax-cheating and only really wanted to be seen to be going electronic and efficient. His soul-destroying efforts to drag the tax authority out of the middle ages were only meant to help with the headlines, they were never meant to identify true graft.
The Papandreou government crammed down the pensions of all Greeks to a level that would be more compatible with the wherewithal of the state and its ability to service them, but spared, among others, doctors, lawyers, engineers, employees of the Bank of Greece and, naturally, journalists, to the extent that 7.3% of all pensions now account for more than 50% of all pension expenses. (Perhaps it’s better to say that the bottom 92.7% of Greek pensioners draw less than 50% of all pensions.)
The patriotic, environmentally aware visionary who decided to build the first world-standard resort in the history of the nation also took the law into his hands when it came to developing Costa Navarino. The laws he flouted are not respected by anybody else either. But will his successors show the same sensitivity to the environment as he did? At his scale, it matters even more.
The grotesque caricature of a man who presides over the union for the Public Power Corporation is a walking and talking stumbling block against progress. He personifies everything that’s wrong in Greece regarding entitlement versus progress. And yet, he has a point: electricity should be a right. And in tiny enough a country like Greece, the business is a natural monopoly. Moreover, for every “employee” of the PPC who’s never been to his non-existing office, there’s a lignite miner out there nursing his herniated discs with pride. Shall the union not defend the latter in the interest of punishing the former? It never was responsible for the hiring!
The book goes on, always along such lines.
No claim is made that the answer is hiding in plain sight or even that any one of the problems is tractable. The original book ends with an uplifting account of new economy ventures based in Athens. This revised edition (rather fittingly) ends with a full narrative of the unedifying events leading to the Grexit referendum and the baffling 180 degree turn that followed.
This is a proper six-star book, written from deep inside. As is often the case with top-quality journalism, conclusions are left to the reader. The material is all there, however, and the tone is never didactic or overbearing. The author tries not to tell you what to think.
The prose could be a bit less “perfect,” from where I stand. The highest-standard-possible cliché is never too far, hinting at detachment that actually isn’t there. The book is better than its far-too-idiomatic, showy English. But I’m quibbling, I loved reading this.
Boy, do I wish the author had covered the saga of AEK, my club. I still don’t have the full picture of what’s happening there…
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
A decent introduction on Greece’s current crisis along with history leading there geared towards the layman
By Yoda
This reviewer was looking to answer the question of why Greece, despite being a relatively developed nation (not fully developed), was hit by the crisis of 2008 as hard as it was. The reviewer was seeking to answer the question on the back of this very book, “How did a prosperous, seemingly advanced economy in the heart of Europe collapse so precipitously?” Just seeing this question, along with seeing who the author was (a journalist at one of Greece’s major center-right newspapers), prompted him to buy it. The book attempts to answer this question not only in the immediate post 2008 period but also in the context historical context of the entire post 1980 period. As the book’s preface states (p. xvi), “the experience of social, economic and administrative implosion since 2010 and the years of myopia, corrupted ideals and sheer, breathtaking incompetence that lad the groundwork for it, is the topic of this book”.
How well does the book fulfill this goal? Fairly well. The book, from the perspective of a layman and told from the view point of a journalist (as opposed to an economist, political scientist or anthropologist) covers the important topics of tax collection, pensions, the state’s direct role in the nation’s economy in terms of direct ownership of industry as well as regulation (incompetence beyond belief combined with clientelism and corruption), labor market inflexibility and inability to attract foreign investment (among many other problems). It discusses not just their state in the post 2008 crisis period but also their long-term history (since 1980) and how this has led to the horrendous current state. All and all a good survey.
The book does have a number of problems however. One is that there is no discussion or analysis comparing Greece, during that same time frame, with Ireland, Spain and Portugal. Much more importantly, there is no discussion and analysis of the very important role of capital flows in what happened. This reviewer highly recommends the ex-finance minister Yanis Varoufakis’ book “The Global Minotaur”. Although that book is not on the direct topic of the impact of capital flows on Greece per se, it is on the impact of nations on the periphery (of which Greece is a nation). This is of great importance as even if many of the problems not mentioned and elaborated on the book did not exist, capital flows of the magnitude of the post 2008 crisis would still have had a devastating impact (i.e., look at Ireland, Spain, Portugal). Unfortunately intelligent discussion and analysis of the impacts of these capital flows on peripheral nations is sadly lacking even in many texts on the post 2008 crisis written by writers such as Alan Blinder (see his “After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead”), Martin Wolf (“The Shifts and the Shocks: What We have Learned – and have Still to Learn”), Ben Bernanke (The Federal Reserve and the Financial Crisis), Paul Krugman (End this Depression Now), George Soros (Financial Turmoil in Europe and the United States: Essays), Richard Koo (The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics: Lessons from Japan’s Great Recession), John Authers (The Fearful Rise of Markets), Carmen Reinhart (This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Follies) and Nouriel Roubini (Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance).
There is also, in this reviewer’s opinion, not enough discussion and analysis related to economic institutional factors that have contributed to Greece’s current state. On this topic this reviewer highly recommends either Theodore Pelagidis “Greece from Exit to Recovery” or Michael Mitsopolous “Understanding the Crisis in Greece: From Boom to Bust” (for more details see this review’s reviews of both books). This reviewer does not recommend both as there is tremendous overlap between the two. Last but not least there is not enough history in Mr. Palaiologo’s book of fiscal policies and the accompanying debt that magnified the problem and made it so much worse in Greece than in Ireland, Spain and Portugal.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
One Good Perspective on the Fall of Greece
By Amazon Customer
This is a good book, written by a Greek citizen who knows his country well, too well actually. The author describes the corruption of the Greek state and Greek society in excruciating detail. As the author makes clear, essentially every aspect of Greek life is completely corrupt, completely paralyzed, completely dominated by the pervasive disease of clientelism.
The author is clearly on the left politically. However, that doesn’t prevent the author from relentlessly attacking the role the left played in destroying Greece. The author quotes any number of left-wing intellectuals and academics as to how the left undermined and plundered the Greek state. The author is quite direct in demonstrating the role of the extreme left (including violent anarchists) in paralyzing Greek government, education, etc.
That said, the author isn’t shy about excusing the abuses of the wealthy and the business community. To state this directly, clientelism has never been the sole province of the public employees, handout recipients, government owned corporations, etc. The wealthy have engaged in tax evasion on a vast scale, crippling the ability of the government to provide public services. The private sector has been more than willing to restrict competition and rig markets for personal gain.
Does the book have flaws? Yes, of course. The author endlessly repeats the "austerity" myth. It is quite true that the Greek people have suffered vast hardships since 2008 including pension cuts, healthcare cuts, massive unemployment, underemployment, lower wages, higher taxes, and higher prices. However, none of these (quite real) traumas have anything to do with “austerity” because “austerity” has never happened.
Since the crisis started in 2008, there has never been a single year when the rest of Europe (notably including Germany) has not provided financial aid to Greece. Greece has never even come close to covering its bills since 2008 with the (massive) gap paid for by Europe (including Germany). In exactly one year (2014) Greece was able to cover a fraction of the interest on its (vast) debt. Even in that year (2014) the rest of the interest on the debt was paid for by Europe. To state the obvious, Greece has never repaid a penny of its debts (and probably never will).
So why is Greece in such dire straits if “austerity” is a myth? Because before the crisis Greece was able to massively borrow from Europe (notably Germany) and run gigantic deficits. Since the crisis, Greece hasn’t been able to run vast deficits by borrowing abroad, forcing the Greek government to live within its means. Of course, that’s only partially true because Greece has continued to exploit European money (to a lesser degree) since 2008. In other words, Greece is still living beyond its means, but to a lesser degree.
Why has the forcible reduction is Greece’s budget deficit produced so much hardship in Greece? Part of the answer is the obvious. Vast swaths of Greek society fed at the public sector trough and the supply of slop has been reduced. However, that is only part of the answer. The deeper point is the Greek government borrowing abroad, financed Greece’s staggering trade and Current Account (CA) deficits before the crash.
Before the crash, the Greek economy was badly hollowed out. Imports dwarfed exports (including trade in services, notably tourism). The Greek trade deficit was massive. However, the Greek economy was booming anyway. How? Why? The Greek public sector was borrowing massively, offsetting the trade deficit. In essence, Greek was exporting debt (rather than real goods and services) to “balance” its foreign trade. When the foreign lending stopped, Greece crashed (and hasn’t recovered).
This is, by the way, the real story of Greece’s economy since 2000. The author and all of the media coverage focuses on (alleged) German “austerity”, Greek profligacy (quite real in the public sector), Greece’s massive foreign debt (almost irrelevant), politics (Greece has plenty), corruption (Greece has plenty), etc. The author and media coverage misses the underlying story of gigantic trade deficits and how they led to the inevitable crash.
The actual numbers for Greece for 2007 were Exports $24.4 billion (FOB), Imports $59.12 billion, Current Account $-21.37 billion. GDP $232.5 billion (on an exchange rate basis, not PPP). Greece was doomed. This would have been generally obvious had it not been for the Euro fantasy (in Europe) and the “deficits don’t matter” fantasy (in the USA and Europe).
The book never mentions Greece’s huge pre-crash trade and CA deficits. The words current account, deficit, exports, imports, and trade are literally missing from the index and barely (very barely) appear in the book.
As stated above, this is good book and well worth reading. The crushing flaws of Greek society are laid bare for all too see. Reading this book, the reasons for the inability of the Troika or Greece to reform Greece become all too clear. The people of Greece (even now) have never embraced reform and probably never will. Of course, as useful as a worms-eye view of Greece is, you never get the “big” picture (trade deficits, economic growth, budget deficits, debts, etc.).
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