THE repayment schedule for the Greek government’s massive debt is entering an unforgiving phase. The IMF expects €750m on May 12th. This is only the start of a summer of herculean labours: Greece will need to find an additional €3 billion each for the IMF and the European Central Bank by the end of August. To do so, it will need those two, along with other euro-zone governments, to disburse the last slice of the bail-out they granted it in 2012. Yet Greece and its creditors cannot agree on conditions for the loan. A meeting of euro-zone finance ministers on May 11th in Brussels was not expected to make much headway.
The Greek government, led by Syriza, an anti-austerity party, has encouraged its creditors by sidelining the combative finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis. Instead, Euclid Tsakalotos, a deputy foreign minister, is now negotiating on Greece’s behalf. But while their bearing may be different, their economic outlook and intellectual roots are exactly the same.
Syriza’s economics ministers are not ex-bankers or technocrats, as in many European countries, but academics. Before joining the cabinet, several, including Messrs Tsakalotos and Varoufakis, were economics professors. Mr Varoufakis taught at the University of Athens, where he set up a PhD program "committed to portraying economics as an irresolvable contest of ideas”. It embraced...Continue reading
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