The reality at ground level is more akin to an economic
version of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in which specific kinds of negatives are dealt
with by simply eliminating them from view. Thus in early January 2013, the European
Central Bank announced that Greece’s economy was on the path back to growth,
and Moody’s upgraded Greek debt by a point; the country’s rating is still low,
but such shifts matter to investors, always desperate to find destinations for
their capital. It meant that Greece was again becoming safe territory, and
largely meant the buying up at very cheap prices of what had been valuable
parts of the national economy. We saw a
similar process in South Korea and Thailand during the so-called Asian
financial crisis.[2]
Greece’s 30% of workers who had lost their jobs, countless
broken firms and neighbourhoods were left out of the picture. This economic
cleansing works, but it does so on the backs of all those who have been
expelled.