NEW YORK TIMES: ..The Greek government has made a range of painful cuts to salaries, pensions and jobs for public workers over the last four years, saying they were needed to satisfy the demands of the international creditors that bailed the country out. But the Greeks hurt by those steps, and the nation’s courts, have a different idea.
Steadily, citizens groups — including police officers, university professors, cleaning workers and judges themselves — have challenged the cuts as illegal or unconstitutional. And in case after case, Greek courts have agreed, presenting a nearly existential question for the government: Can it actually shrink the state?
The mounting pile of judgments has now become a serious obstacle to the austerity drive of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, with the International Monetary Fund warning this week that the “adverse court rulings” threaten to undo the country’s reforms, which its creditors are scheduled to begin reviewing in July… (more)
EDITOR: What does the impending fall of the S Iraq regime have in common with the plight of Greece? In both cases, outsiders (the USA for Iraq and the EURO group for Greece) have tried to impose its views on how the countries are to be governed.
The US should never have attacked Iraq. Greece should have dropped the Euro and returned to the drachma as currency.
To heck with the neo-cons in the USA and the German bankers in Europe. They have done enough damage already!
