Word: europeanizer
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...there's good reason to doubt Greece will find any quick fix for its tax problems. Like other southern European nations, the country's culture of tax evasion is deeply rooted, woven into the very fabric of relations between the citizen and state. "Greeks love their country, but they don't trust it," says a small businessman who asked to be called Dimitris, saying he feared repercussion from the authorities if he gave his real name. "They tell us the state is broken. There is no money for health, for pensions, for education. On the other hand, we see people...
Widespread evasion feeds the Greek attitude that only the stupid pay taxes. Little wonder that Greece's tax revenue is among the lowest in the European Union, 19.8% of GDP (excluding social security) compared to an E.U. average of 26.1%. (Italy's take is 29.1%, Portugal's 24.5%, Spain's 20.7%). Only a handful of E.U. countries - the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania - do worse. And none of them use the euro. (Read: "Is the Euro the New Dollar...
...Greece struggles to convince its European partners it is working to end its crisis, George Pagoulatos, a professor at the Athens University of Economics and Business, says the mess may have a positive side. For the first time in recent history, he says, there's widespread consensus in Greece that radical reform is needed. "Now it's a choice between survival and nonsurvival of the state," he said. "The range of dissenting choices is limited...
Shortly after Papandreou took office in October, his socialist government revealed that Greece's finances were in far worse shape than the previous government had let on. The 2009 deficit was nearly 13% of GDP, more than four times the euro zone's 3% limit. The European Commission blasted Greece for the faulty stats, and ratings agencies downgraded Greek debt, sending yields on government bonds skyrocketing. Over the past two months, as fears have grown that Greece's poisonous finances could infect the rest of Europe, the euro has slipped by almost 7% against the dollar. The Greek crisis...
Athens has scrambled to calm jittery investors and skeptical European Union partners that it can clean up its mess without any assistance. In mid-January the Papandreou government, which has to raise $75 billion to close its gaping fiscal shortfall, announced an ambitious three-year austerity plan to reduce the deficit to 2% of output by 2013. "Greece is playing by the euro zone's rules and it will put its house in order," Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou tells TIME. "To borrow words from an ad: Watch this space...