Spin that: new Finance Minister Hardouvelis ‘a willing slave’ of IMF, according to 2012 article by… new government spokesperson

Only a few hours after the government reshuffle was announced yesterday with Gkikas Hardouvelis at the head of the Finance Ministry and Sofia Voultepsi as government spokesperson, a scathing article written by the latter about the former has emerged (link in Greek).
 
Ms Voultepsi, a New Democracy MP, wrote the article for the right wing newspaper ‘Eleftheri Ora’ in January 2012 when Mr Hardouvelis was an economic adviser to the then Prime Minister Lucas Papademos.
 
Papademos led the interim government following the resignation of George Papandreou and was tasked with ensuring Greece’s compliance with the Memorandum Agreement, overseeing the PSI agreement to restructure Greece’s debt prior to the general elections in May and June.
 
In a damning takedown titled ‘It is not 1999 Mr Hardouvelis, but 1922’, Ms Voultepsi effectively accuses Mr Hardouvelis as being out of touch a ‘willing slave’ to the country’s lenders who she says were subjugating the country. At the time New Democracy was in opposition and campaigned in the run up to the May 2012 elections on an anti-memorandum platform.
 
She notes that in an interview at the time Mr Hardouvelis had stated that the lenders knew that certain economic reforms would cause a deeper recession but pushed for them anyway in order to see whether the Greeks has ‘gotten serious’.
 
“So, even as an economist, he acknowledges outright that the country is being strangled clearly in order to make an example of it – i.e. it is being punished in order to exhaust and nullify it, for there not to be the slightest hope of it recovering.” Voultepsi wrote.

The article denounces the country’s lenders themselves as being leaders in corruption and bribery and in no place to lecture the Greeks. Ms Voultepsi also accuses the Papandreou administration of deliberately leading the country into the Memorandum despite knowing the heavy cost it would entail for the Greeks, effectively levelling the charge of treasonous behaviour at Papandreou and his Finance Minister, Giorgos Papaconstantinou, with Mr Hardouvelis playing the role of an accomplice.
 
She also notes that the economist who, prior to advising the Papadimos government also has consulted for banks and advised the government of Costas Simitis, was part of the government committee tasked with producing a report on the Greek deficit. She effectively accuses that committee of inflating the deficit in order to justify the signing of the memorandum agreement with the IMF and other lenders which, she notes, cost Greece its sovereignty.
 
It is of course unlikely that at the time Ms Voultepsi could have ever predicted that the man she was criticizing so harshly would one day be an ally. After all, as leader of the opposition in early 2012 Antonis Samaras was pledging to ‘rip up’ the memorandum and that he would never under any circumstances be in a coalition government with PASOK…
 
Ms Voultepsi ended her article with a postscript saying that if Mr Hardouvelis had “masochistic tendencies and likes punishments, then something can be found for him…”
 
Two years later it turns out that that ‘something’ is the position of Greek Minister of Finance.

Below is the article with only minor omissions for clarity. Translation by TPPI:
 
From blackmail to blackmail we have reached the last stage of servility. To, “Kill me my chief, so I can be redeemed.”
 
Wherever you turn, you will happen upon someone willing to be subjugated, ready to explain and make excuses, to fall in line with the lenders’ thinking.
 
From the prime minister [then Lucas Papademos] to the Finance Minister [then Filippos Sachinidis] to the competent (let’s say) ministers, general secretaries – former and aspiring destroyers of the country.
 
And as if that wasn’t enough, most recently joining their ranks is the another ‘analyst’ of the compulsive disorders of the lenders.
 
That is Gkikas Hardouvelis, the head of the Economic Office of Mr Papademos, who in between offering his services to Prime Ministers Simitis and Papademos (always in the same post) acts as a professor of Financial and Banking Management at the University of Piraeus.
 
As he said speaking to SKAI, our lenders “know that if the 13 and 14th monthly salaries are cut, consumption will drop further and there will be a greater recession but… they want, with this pressure, to see if ‘the Greeks have gotten serious and see the problems in their country.”
 
So, even as an economist, he acknowledges outright that the country is being strangled clearly in order to make an example of it – i.e. it is being punished in order to exhaust and nullify it, for there not to be the slightest hope of it recovering.

He is however, making a mistake. Because his life has not been at all affected by the miserable state the country has reached and because he continues to provide, in one way or another, his ‘services’ here and there, without ever needing to explain what advice he gave to Prime Minister Simitis of the so-called ‘Strong Greece’ and of the credit default swaps, he thinks that we are still in that ‘golden age’ of the direct awarding of lucrative arms procurement contracts and of the expensive SIemens contracts.
 
He believes, in other words, that the county will be reduced to complete poverty and to its (inevitable) bankruptcy without a nose being bloodied.
 
He believes that we will sit by and be punished by those who set the bar in corruption, in the looting of archaeological treasures, in clientism (see what is currently happening with the German President who is accused of suspicious relationships with the business establishment of his country) in bribery and in the transfer of black money to tax havens  because, perhaps, we have been gripped by a form of Stockholm Syndrome.
 
Of course, he is mistaken. Even more so if he does not apply his mind toward finding some more scientific solution other than that of punishment his, albeit new, boss will flee in darkness – having also participated in the national treason – while he himself will have trouble finding a bank to (re)hire him given that the country will have been driven to an irregular default.
 
So given that things are not how they were, the professor and permanent prime ministerial economic adviser would do well to avoid the sirens of publicity in the future and stop the ridiculous statements regarding ‘great punishers’ because they too (the ridiculous punishers) know that if Greece falls, they will all be dragged down to hell together.
 
He should also see to it – just as the other professors, bank heads and other prime ministerial advisers who have taken it upon themselves to terrify us – to go unnoticed as much as possible because it is not 1999 but 1922.
 
He should also avoid enraging us again because we will recall that he was a member of the famous seven-member deficit committee who were appointed in October 2009 by [then Finance Minister] Mr Papaconstantinou in order to create the legitimizing context for the country to enter the Memorandum Agreement.
 
In order to accommodate the Papandreou government and facilitate the duo Papandreou – Papaconstantinou in their plans, the members of that committee issued in February 2012 a report which portrayed Greece in the worst possible light.
 
A few days ago the former Finance Minister of Italy Giulio Tremonti stated that for Italy the problem wasn’t establishing a new package of austerity but going to the IMF for assistance.
 
And that because, as he warned, going to the IMF entails a loss of national sovereignty, because the IMF lends capital in return for the IMF taking control of the governance of the country that it is lending to, which it controls through its own bureaucratic mechanisms.  
 
We are now at that stage. And that is why the duo Papandreou – Papaconstantinou will be called to account  – as well as everyone else who chose this catastrophic path and serves it to this day.
 
Because they knew. And if they didn’t know, they should be condemned for idiocy.
 
The duo – Papandreou – Papaconstantinou (and all of the others who subsequently submitted – led by Venizelos) knew very well when were leading us to the IMF, the content of the report the Fund released to the public on the 6th of August 2009 – when those gentlemen were saying [prior to the October 2009 elections] that ‘there is money’ in order to steal the votes of the trusting.
 
In that report the IMF recommended the elimination of the 13th and 14 monthly pension payments, wage freezes, tax hikes – especially on VAT and on property taxes – and increased freedom to dismiss workers.
 
The IMF was also requesting fiscal measures worth 3.7 billion euros per year from 2010 to 2013 as well as: Stricter restrictions on pay rises in the public sector. Reductions in excessive personnel in the public sector. Reform of the pension system, changes in labour protection frameworks with elimination of restrictions on mass-layoffs and support of part-time work, a ‘social contract’ between workers – employers – the state which would provide for the downward adjustment of wages and liberalisation of the markets, products and services.
 
So they knew. They had it in writing. The course was set. That is what Tremonti warned about.
 
And they didn’t know from the 6th of August 2009 but from much earlier. The content of the report was known from the 31st of July 2009.
 
And yet, the gentlemen who buried us in lies in order to win the election deliberately did not take it into account.
 
Indeed on the 5th of August 2009, one day before the publication of the IMF’s report ( the content of which, as noted, was already known) Mr Papandreou (who is now whining together with his brother) asked for elections again and assured us that:
 
“The EU and the international markets fund Greece’s debt and are asking for a medium term plan with measures for both revenue and spending, as well as a programme of measurable structural reforms, which may bear fruit over the long term. We need to negotiate over the deficit which must be done by a government with a clear mandate. PASOK will eliminate all of the tax measures which were announced in recent weeks by the government and which are against the weaker economic levels.”
 
Therefore: various gentlemen and ladies… (including the President of the Republic), various wannabe leaders of PASOK (who before the elections were promising their mothers and fathers), various ‘protectors’ of the Simitis legacy (including today’s PM and his advisers ) would do well to understand that they cannot move forward without elections (which they keep delaying in order to save their hides).
 
The advisors to the Prime Minister and those who would resort to scaring the people would do well to advise Mr Papademos to advise [the Culture Minister] Pavlos Geroulanos (a member of his crowded and incompetent government) to find a way to pay the guards of archaeological sites during bank holidays, because museums and archaeological sites were shut during the bank holiday that just passed.
 
Especially Mr Hardouvelis, instead of trying to convince us that we must accept our punishment from the incompetent representatives of our lenders, should see to it to that our museums are selling tickets which house whatever artefacts we were allowed to keep by the pillaging ‘great punishers’.
 
P.S. If he is a masochist and he likes punishments we can find something for him…