It was a case of mistaken identity.
I’d glanced briefly at my Twitter timeline and registered the words ‘Donald’ and ‘President’.
‘What’s he said now?’, I wondered to myself.
It turned out to be an insensitive comment about another country, so no surprise there. Except that it was about Greece and the end of its bail-out programme – not an obviously Trumpian topic of interest.
But, of course, I’d got the wrong Donald. On closer inspection it turned out to be D. Tusk, President of the European Council, not D. Trump, President of the United States of America.
If you missed it, here’s the tweet in all it’s sick-making glory:
“You did it! Congratulations to Greece and its people on ending the programme of financial assistance. With huge efforts and European solidarity you seized the day.”
It’s amazing how much misjudgment you can pack into 26 words. But the tweet is just as remarkable for what it doesn’t say.
For instance, it doesn’t say that over a fifth of Greeks are living in severe material deprivation (and over a quarter of Greek children). Nor does it acknowledge the unemployment rate of around 20% or the youth unemployment rate of almost twice that. There’s no mention that nearly half-a-million Greeks have left their homeland; no mention that the crisis has wiped out a fifth of the Greek economy; or that productivity and investment have cratered; or that the country remains weighed down by extraordinarily high levels of sovereign debt and nonperforming loans. (A horrifying OECD report has the grim details).
All that and more is the context for Tusk’s cheery “You did it!” – as if it were 2004 again and the Greek football team had just won the Euros.
The fact that Greece has returned to growth, that the government is running a primary surplus and that the bail-out programme has stopped is, of course, to be welcomed – but not as a distraction from the fact that the damage done to the Greek economy is extreme and permanent and, above all, ongoing.
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