[MGSA-L] Fwd: BBC - Adam Curtis Blog: THE GHOST OF THE COLONELS

[George Nakos]

I am sending two articles that were published in the Greek daily TA NEA few weeks ago.  The chart shows that the Greek state debt started increasing in 1981.

George Nakos

From: mgsa-l-bounces at uci.edu [mailto:mgsa-l-bounces at uci.edu] On Behalf Of Aristide D. Caratzas
Sent: Saturday, November 05, 2011 1:09 PM
To: MGSA List
Subject: Re: [MGSA-L] Fwd: BBC - Adam Curtis Blog: THE GHOST OF THE COLONELS

While it may be satisfying to ascribe all of today's ills to the Junta, Adam Curtis doesn't merit serious consideration, except that as a film maker he is likely to infect others with his ignorance.

This obviously is a complicated subject but the point needs to be made: the reality is that Greece of the 1970s through 1981 had very little debt; in fact in 1981 state debt represented about 26-27% of GDP. At the same time it sustained a high rate of economic growth.

The policies of heavy state indebtedness (and destruction of productive capacity, cf. "socialization" of industries into extinction) began with Andreas Papandreou, who used cheap (borrowed) money to buy  both to "buy acquiescence" and create massive corruption (in his words "όλοι πρέπει να φάμε, αλλά όχι 400 εκατομμύρια...," and the Pangalos recent refrain, "όλοι φάγαμε" [sic]). These simply are the facts. The governments that followed, to a greater or lesser extent, maintained this policy until the money ran out...

And a disclaimer: the above is not a political statement but a call to minimum academic integrity. There is too much real information and serious opinions that we need to take into account for us to waste time with the kind of nonsense in the Curtis piece.

Aristide Caratzas


On Nov 4, 2011, at 5:04 PM, Neni Panourgia wrote:


Although the Junta did not murder "thousands of ordinary people" as Adam Curtis mentions in this article, the article is worth reading because it ties the present crisis to the Junta years and the Colonels' practice of buying acquiescence with cheap loans.

np/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2011/11/the_ghost_of_the_colonels.html



Adam Curtis is a documentary film maker, whose work includes The Power of Nightmares<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/4016713.stm>, The Century of the Self<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self>,The Mayfair Set<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mayfair_Set>, Pandora's Box<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora%27s_Box_%28television_documentary_series%29>, The Trap<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_%28television_documentary_series%29> and The Living Dead<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Living_Dead_%28television_documentary_series%29>.

Adam writes: "This is a website expressing my personal views – through a selection of opinionated observations and arguments. I’ll be including stories I like, ideas I find fascinating, work in progress and a selection of material from the BBC archives."
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