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Abstract

This paper addresses neoliberal origins of the acute geoeconomic and social crisis that was inflicted on Greece since 2010 with the unleashing of the 3 consecutive bailout plans and the implementation of fierce austerity policies. We further scrutinize the composition of the soaring Greek debt and most importantly, the unsettling utilization of the troika loans for the 2010–15 period. For the first time in the literature, we provide evidence that the vast bulk of the loans went overwhelmingly not to benefiting a “profligate” Greek state but to avoiding the write-downs of bad loans made by reckless creditors (mainly, German and French banks) to the Greek government and private banks. We propose the temporary adoption of a parallel currency in the form of government IOUs, together with other drastic measures to reboot the ailing Greek economy inside the Eurozone.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2019 Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Publisher Keywords:	Greek crisis, Eurozone, Neoliberalism, Neoliberal policies, Sovereign debt Austerity, Parallel currency
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DF Greece H Social Sciences > HG Finance J Political Science > JC Political theory
Departments:	Bayes Business School > Finance
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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