Austerity Quotes
His predecessors had lied about the status of the Greek Economy and then squandered the money with waste, fraud, and corruption. To avoid total national bankruptcy, Greece needed a large bailout which was given subject to a set of required conditions of reform and transparency. This “austerity” package created a great hardship for many of the average Greek citizens while the wealthy who had benefitted from the previous incompetence and corruption took their money out of the country. The Greek voters elected a new government without much experience but who were committed to lifting the burden of the austerity package. The problem was that the major nations of the Eurozone, whose taxpayers would have to pay for the bailout, had been burned before by Greek government lies and incompetence and did not trust the Greeks, insisting on the austerity measures if any bailout money would be forthcoming. The new Greek government was caught in a great dilemma. Agree to the same kind of Austerity package and continue the great hardships on the people or go into Bankruptcy and leave the Eurozone the consequences of which would probably be worse. The finance minister was hoping for a compromise.
Romney, the Republican Presidential Candidate, was advocating budgets to cut the Federal expenditures for Collage Student Grants and Loans.
One fourth of the entire Spanish population was out of work in a depression what was in part caused by government austerity required by the other European capitalist nations in exchange for loans to keep the county from total financial collapse. The protesters tended to blame capitalism itself rather than the particular manifestation of capitalism that Spanish politicians and business leaders had implemented in the past and how Europe was currently reacting. Clearly one weakness of capitalism at the time was that recessions and depressions were too frequent, hard to recover from, with the pain borne by the poor and middle class while the rich and upper class was able to maintain their standard of living and in some cases make even more money.
This position angered the extreme conservatives and the extreme liberals who both opposed him in 2012. However, the majority of the state supported him and he was elected on this middle of the road platform with most of the activists against him.
