by Emiliano Brancaccio and Gennaro Zezza – translated from Italian by Tom Gill

You cannot say that between 2010 and 2014, Greece has not “done their homework” assigned by the Troika. The tax burden has grown by five percentage points of GDP, public spending has fallen by a quarter and wages have fallen by twenty percentage points. The European Commission has always maintained that these policies would not have depressed the economy and would have boosted competitiveness. But its Greek GDP forecasts have been repeatedly been wide of the mark: the collapse of production in Greece showed a gap compared with the estimates of Brussels that sometimes exceeded the embarrassing figure of seven percent of GDP. Continue reading →