Latin America’s old-guard leftist leaders and at least two prominent U.S. Nobel Prize-winning economists say that Greece, much like Argentina in 2001, can default on its foreign debts without facing and apocalyptic scenario. Trouble is, Greece isn’t Argentina.
To be fair, there are two clearly different camps among those who applaud Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ decision to reject European Union and International Monetary Fund calls for structural reforms in exchange for new rescue loans.
The first group is made up of Latin America’s old-guard leftist leaders such as the presidents of Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina and Cuba. Most of them have ruined their countries’ economies or use anti-capitalist rhetoric to justify their authoritarian ways, and can’t be taken too seriously when they celebrate Greece’s July 5 “No” vote against austerity measures.
But the second group includes Nobel Prize-winning economists Joseph E. Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, and other respected non-orthodox economists who make several valid points in their defense of Greece’s financial rebellion. They point out, for instance, that European leaders share the blame for Greece’s current crisis for having imposed unrealistic austerity packages on Greece in recent years.
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Etiquetas: Andres Oppenheimer, Argentina corralito, Greece, Greek government-debt crisis