Friday, June 17, 2011



Shuffling the deckchairs in Greece

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou's response to protests and backbench rebellions against his austerity program? A cabinet reshuffle. Because obviously, swapping who gets to ride in which Ministerial limo will magically fix everything!

This is shuffling the proverbial deckchairs on the Titanic. It does not solve his underlying problem: that his proposal has been utterly rejected by the Greek people, to the extent that the message has even gotten through to their Parliament. But it buys a few more days while they piss around with a confidence vote, before having to confront that problem again and risk giving either the IMF of the Greek people a definitive answer (resulting in either default or serious unpleasantness).