The money did exist!

By Kostas Plantzos

Entrapped between “money exists” and the leveling of salaries and pensions, PASOK MPs have begun a “guerilla war”, in the first instance “served” by Giorgos Papakonstantinou, to justify the fact that they can “say one thing and vote for another”; however, the treasure of the 32bil on which PASOK stepped before the elections has proved to be fake.

Giorgos Papakonstantinou who included into the urgent bill (regarding labor and wages in private sector and DEKO) an irrelevant and almost technocratic provision, managed to complicate the situation enough to turn the conversation to the 22bil euros “phantom debt” rather than the wage “slaughter” and acquired goods.

Already since last weekend MPs from all parties have been nagging about limited speech time, while those of PASOK were saying that they face problems even when they go into a café in their village because they vote “yes” to all the bills.

Papakonstantinou offered the perfect alibi and backed off from their pressure. However, he pledged that he will reintroduce the issue of debt relief, since only in Greece is there no elimination process for “uncollectible” debts.

According to sources, the Troika has been pressing the government for a while now to remove uncollectible debts, because they want “clean accounts” rather than hypothetical assumptions and speculations.

200% over in Karamanlis’ era

From the 32bil euros only 10 are considered actually collectible. Since 2004, the uncollectible debts towards the state have increased by approximately 200%.

The bubble of debts includes not only private, but also public enterprises (eg OSE). The same list includes the known scandal of structured bonds by Acropolis Brokerage, which alone shows debts of 551 million from fines and so on and so forth…

But other freelancers are included, as well as known construction, advertising and tourism companies, as well as famous artists.