Η πειθώ στα χρόνια των Μνημονίων: Ή, γιατί στηρίζω το ΚεΦιΜ.

Αντί εισαγωγής

Η πρώτη μου δουλειά ήταν η καλύτερη. Το σχολείο μου είχε (και έχει ακόμη) έναν επιτυχημένο ρητορικό όμιλο* και στη συμμετοχή μου σε αυτόν χρωστάω πολλές από τις σημαντικότερες φιλίες και εμπειρίες της ζωής μου. 

Όταν ήρθε η σειρά μου να προπονήσω τον όμιλο, προέτρεπα τους μαθητές να μην αναλώνονται στη συλλογή στατιστικών στοιχείων και ο ίδιος τα χρησιμοποιούσα πολύ σπάνια. Υπήρχαν πρακτικοί λόγοι γι' αυτό (δύσκολα διασταυρώνονται στοιχεία στη μέση της συζήτησης), ύπήρχε όμως και η εκπαιδευτική διάσταση. Το ζητούμενο ήταν να καταλάβει κανείς πώς δομείται ένα επιχείρημα, από που αντλεί την ισχύ του, και πώς μπορούν να εντοπιστούν οι αδυναμίες του - όχι να μάθει απέξω νούμερα και παραπομπές. Oι μαθητές αναλάμβαναν στην τύχη την πλευρά του θέματος την οποία θα υπερασπίζονταν. Όχι για να μάθουν τάχα ότι δεν υπάρχει αλήθεια, αλλά για να μάθουν ότι ο συνάνθρωπός μας πολλές φορές πρώτα διαμορφώνει 'θέσει' την άποψή του κι εκ των υστέρων μαθαίνει να την υπερασπίζεται. Ο δημόσιος διάλογος δε, ακολουθεί τον κανόνα του Kuhn: ένα υπόδειγμα νικιέται από ένα άλλο υπόδειγμα, από ένα πιο ελκυστικό αφήγημα. Δεν νικιέται από τα δεδομένα που δεν εξηγεί. 

Δεν έχω αλλάξει γνώμη, παρά τα φαινόμενα. 

Το ιστολόγιο αυτό δεν ξεκίνησε για να κάνω fact-checks και να γράφω σεντόνια. Η κρίση όμως, και ειδικά οι επικοινωνιακοί εμφύλιοι του 2010—12 και του 2015, τα έφεραν όλα αυτά στο προσκήνιο από ανάγκη. Ο κόσμος έμαθε να πιστεύει κυριολεκτικά τέρατα. Βασικά στοιχεία, προσβάσιμα κατ' αρχήν, έλειπαν από την επιχειρηματολογία και την αντίληψη κάθε πλευράς. Τα ηλεκτρονικά μέσα, ακόμη κι εκείνα με ονόματα βαριά σαν πιεστήριο, σπάνια παρέθεταν πρωτογενείς πηγές. Η κοντόφθαλμη λογική τους ακόμη και τώρα είναι ότι ένας επισκέπτης που ξεροσταλιάζει παθητικά στις σελίδες τους είναι πολυτιμότερος από κάποιον που αλλάζει σελίδα για να εξετάσει τις πηγές τους. 

Τι μένει να πούμε;

Κι όμως σιγά σιγά η σκόνη καταλαγιάζει. Οι Έλληνες έχουν μάθει την ορολογία της κρίσης και ποιά νούμερα πρέπει να προσέχουν σαν ηλικιωμένοι που κάνουν συχνά εξετάσεις. Οι πάλαι ποτέ αντιμνημονιακοί υπογράφουν μνημόνια και τα υπερασπίζονται ψελλίζοντας λόγια που τους μάθαμε εμείς, οι γερμανοτσολιάδες - προδότες - νεφελίμ - ανάλγητοι φιλελέρες. Το κακό ΔΝΤ έγινε καλό ΔΝΤ, και σιγά σιγά απλά ΔΝΤ. Μετά από επτάμιση χρόνια, οι Έλληνες όσες πληροφορίες ήθελαν να μάθουν πάνω-κάτω τις έχουν μάθει. 

Στο μεταξύ οι Έλληνες φιλελεύθεροι χάσαμε τη μάχη για τη νοηματοδοσία της Κρίσης. Σε μια Βουλή με Λεβέντη, Νικνικ, Πόρτα-Πόρτα και Χρυσαυγίτες έχουμε ελάχιστους βουλευτές και κανένα γνήσια δικό μας κόμμα. Ο Έλληνας δέχτηκε, με τα πολλά, ότι το κράτος ξόδευε περισσότερα από όσα εισέπραττε κι ότι δεν παίζει να μας χαρίσει λεφτά ο Πούτιν ή να πλουτίσουμε από τα πετρέλαια του Αιγαίου.Αλλά μετά από επτά χρόνια κρίσης δεν τον νοιάζει ποιός έφταιξε ούτε τι έπρεπε να είχε γίνει διαφορετικά. 

Επειδή όμως όραμα για την επόμενη μέρα δεν υπάρχει, έχουμε ακόμη μια ευκαιρία να κάνουμε κάτι χρήσιμο για τη χώρα. Η κουβέντα που κάναμε ως τώρα πρέπει να τελειώνει και να δώσει τη θέση της σε έναν εντελώς διαφορετικό διάλογο. 

Ο Κιμ δεν θα πατήσει το κουμπί

Για να δούμε τι είδους διάλογος πρέπει να ξεκινήσει, ας σκεφτούμε τι θα συμβεί αν κάποτε τελικά 'νικήσουμε' ιδεολογικά. Θα πεθάνουν από τη ντροπή τους οι επιτήδειοι κρατιστές και οι συμπολίτες μας που τους έφεραν στην εξουσία; Θα αυτοεξοριστούν όλοι μαζί στη Βενεζουέλα, την Ουγγαρία ή έστω τη Σουηδία (ανάλογα τον καημό του ο καθένας); Θα αποσυρθούν σε μοναστήρια διαβάζοντας προφητείες; Θα δεχτούν την τεχνοκρατική μας ανωτερότητα και θα μας παρακαλέσουν να τους κυβερνήσουμε; Ή μήπως θα πατήσει το κουμπί ο Κίμ, αδειάζοντας την Ελλάδα για να εποικιστεί από πιο άξιους φιλελεύθερους πολίτες εισαγωγής; 

Μα τίποτε απ' όλα αυτά δεν θα γίνει, κι ευτυχώς. Η χώρα μ' αυτά και μ' αυτά θα συνεχίσει να υπάρχει - πιο γερασμένη, πιο φτωχή- και οι ιδεολογικοί μας αντίπαλοι μαζί της. Δεν μας περιμένει ούτε φιλελεύθερη, ούτε εθνικιστική, ούτε σοσιαλιστική, ούτε αναρχική επανάσταση στο τελος του δρόμου. Αφού έχουν έτσι τα πράγματα, τριών ειδών τακτικές μας απομένουν: συνεργασία, δολιοφθορά και προσηλυτισμός. 

Είμαστε λίγοι

Συνεργασία και δολιοφθορά είναι δύο εκδοχές της ίδιας τακτικής - οι φιλελεύθεροι αναρριχώνται στην εξουσία καβάλα σε ένα μεγαλύτερο κόμμα - είτε ως εταίροι του σε έναν κυβερνητικό συνασπισμό, είτε καταλαμβάνοντας εκ των έσω την ηγετική του ομάδα.

Δεν θέλω να αδικήσω όσους σκέφτονται έτσι. Το ελληνικό πολίτευμα είναι τόσο άνισα στημένο κατά των μικρών πολιτικών δυνάμεων που δεν αφήνει περιθώρια για ελπίδα. Ξεχνούν όμως πόσο λίγοι είμαστε (δείτε σχετικά εδώ). Περίπου ένα 6%-7% του εκλογικού σώματος είχαν φιλελεύθερες αξίες το 2008 και στα κοινωνικά και στα οικονομικά ζητήματα . Ίσως φτάσαμε στο 9%-10% το 2015 και εκεί βρισκόμαστε ακόμη το 2017. Οι περισσότεροι φιλελεύθεροι (που όντως ψηφίζουν) υποστηρίζουν τη ΝΔ, όμως μειοψηφούν σημαντικά μεταξύ των ψηφοφόρων της (ήταν λιγότερο από το 20% του συνόλου το 2008, λίγο παραπάνω το 2015, λιγο λιγότεροι το 2017). 

Για να μην σας κουράζω: κανένα κόμμα εξουσίας δεν πρόκειται να αλλάξει δραστικά πορεία για το χατίρι μας. Καλή τύχη στον Κυριάκο, αλλά μην έχετε αυταπάτες. Η δουλειά των κομμάτων εξουσίας δεν είναι να κάνουν ιδεολογικές επαναστάσεις, αλλά να χτίζουν, με μπαλώματα και με εκπτώσεις, συμμαχίες μεταξύ διαφορετικών κοινωνικών ομάδων που για λίγο βρίσκουν κοινό τόπο σε πέντε δέκα αιτήματα. Αυτό δεν είναι ελάττωμα της δημοκρατίας - το αντίθετο.

Η λύση του προσηλυτισμού, όσο δύσκολη κι αν φαντάζει, έχει περισσότερες προοπτικές και είναι απόλυτα συμβατή με τις άλλες δύο. Για να το πω αλλιώς: δεν χρειάζεται οι φιλελεύθεροι να συμφωνήσουμε σε πρόσωπα ή κόμματα αν καταφέρουμε να φτιάξουμε σιγά σιγά ένα πραγματικό, ζωντανό κίνημα που θα φέρει κι άλλους συμπολίτες μας σε επαφή με τις ιδέες μας. Ένας ισχυρός πόλος ψηφοφόρων που είναι συνεπείς σε πέντε απλά αιτήματα και μπορούν να συνεννοηθούν σε βασικό επίπεδο με τους συμπολίτες τους θα αναγκάζει πάντα σε συμβιβασμούς τα κόμματα εξουσίας κι ας μην τα ψηφίσει ποτέ.

"Έχετε δύο λεπτά να σας μιλήσω για τον Κύριο και Σωτήρα μας, την ελεύθερη αγορά;" 

Αν διαλέξουμε την επιλογή της της πειθούς, ο δρόμος μας είναι ανηφορικός. Επτά χρόνια τώρα δεν καταφέραμε να πείσουμε πολλούς συνανθρώπους μας. Οι επικλήσεις της 'κοινής λογικής', η οχύρωση πίσω από στατιστικές, ακόμη και οι εξαγριωμένες επιθέσεις σε 'σανοφάγους' και 'γίδια', όλα αυτή την αδυναμία μας δείχνουν - να πείσουμε, να διδάξουμε ανθρώπους έξω από τον κύκλο μας. Δεν σας κάνω τον έξυπνο - εγώ τα έκανα πρώτος αυτά τα λάθη. Πρέπει όμως να τα αφήσουμε πίσω μας. 

Η "κοινή λογική" είναι η χειρότερη από τις αυταπάτες μας. Ο άνθρωπος δεν είναι αυτό που νομίζουμε. Η ελευθερία κι ο αυταρχισμός του έρχονται εξίσου αυθόρμητα και αβίαστα. Δεν έχει ούτε φυσικό αισθητήριο της αλήθειας ούτε φυσική ροπή προς αυτήν. Το μόνο που ενστικτωδώς αφουγκραζόμαστε στο λόγο του άλλου είναι η βιολογική, κοινωνική, ή ιδεολογική μας συγγένεια - ενστικτωδώς ξεχωρίζουμε τους 'δικούς μας' από τους 'αλλους'. Ακριβώς γι αυτό το λόγο, οι άνθρωποι δεν αλλάζουν γνώμη πάνω στην κουβέντα, επειδή τους έπεισες με τη ρητορική μαεστρία σου, την τετράγωνη λογική σου ή τα τεκμήριά σου. Μπορούν όμως να πειστούν για την καλή σου προαίρεση, ή τη βαθειά σου γνώση, και να αρχίσουν να σε ακούν πιο προσεκτικά.

Ο πραγματικά πειστικός λόγος δεν είναι λοιπόν ο λόγος που αλλάζει γνώμη στον άλλο, αλλά αυτός που τον μπολιάζει με αμφιβολία ή περιέργεια, ή τον κάνει να σκεφτεί με τρόπο που δεν έχει ξανασκεφτεί ποτέ. Που ταράζει τον απαθή. Η πειθώ δημιουργεί μια διαφορά δυναμικού, ας το πούμε έτσι, ανάμεσα στις πεποιθήσεις που έχει, ή ανάμεσα στις πεποιθήσεις και τις πράξεις του. Το τι θα κάνει με αυτή την ενέργεια δεν μπορείς να το καθορίσεις με την πειθώ. Μπορεί (σπάνια) να αλλάξει στάση. Μπορεί (συχνότερα) να αναζητήσει επιπλέον επιβεβαίωση για τις απόψεις του. Μπορεί να σε αποφεύγει ή να σε περιθωριοποιήσει. 

Η αυταπάτη της κοινής λογικης όμως μας περιορίζει και με πιο σημαντικούς τρόπους. Αφενός δεν έχουμε πάντα δίκιο. Αφετέρου ο δημόσιο διάλογος δεν χτίζεται στη βάση της λογικής.

Πώς δουλεύει ο δημόσιος διάλογος

Σκεφτείτε λίγο τι γνωρίζουμε για τη δυναμική του δημόσιου διαλόγου στις μέρες μας. Ο Galam (2013) πχ μας λέει ότι όταν ο δημόσιος διάλογος διεξάγεται υπό συνθήκες αβεβαιότητας, αργά ή γρήγορα υπερισχύει η πλευρά με τους περισσότερους παθιασμένους οπαδούς. Οι Guazzini et al (2015) εξηγούν ότι δεν είναι η προσωπικότητα του άλλου που τον κάνει παθιασμένο. Είναι η θέση του στο δίκτυο. Η προσωπικότητα καθορίζει μόνο σε τίνος την επιρροή θα είναι πιο δεκτικός. Ανακαλύπτουμε λοιπόν αυτό που ξέρουν όλες οι θρησκείες, όλες οι συμμορίες, όλες οι μονάδες ειδικών δυνάμεων, και όλες οι ποδοσφαιρικές ομάδες, είναι ότι κανείς είτε ανατρέφεται μέσα σε έναν χώρο είτε μυείται σε αυτόν με σύμβολα, αφηγήματα και τελετουργίες. Αμφότερες είναι κοινωνικές και όχι λογικέ ή μηχανικές διαδικασίες. 

Αυτό ισχύει και για "πεφωτισμένες" τάχα απόψεις όπως οι δικές μας. Η "γενιά της easyjet" γουστάρει Ευρώπη και ανοιχτά σύνορα γιατί μυήθηκε σε αυτήν σε στιγμές καθοριστικές - στις σπουδές, σε περιπετειώδεις νεανικές διακοπές, σε επιχειρηματικά ταξίδια, σε καλοκαιρινούς έρωτες. Όχι επειδή την έπεισαν τα επιχειρήματα υπέρ της Ενιαίας Αγοράς ή επειδή ψάχτηκε καθόλου σε θέματα Κοινής Αγροτικής Πολιτικής.

Θα μου πείτε - οι φανατικοί πρέπει τουλάχιστον να είναι αμόρφωτοι ή χαζούληδες. Όσο περισσότερα γνωρίζει κανείς τόσο πιο πολύ νερό βάζει στο κρασί του. Κι όμως, μας λένε οι Kahan et al (2013), αναλύοντας το φαινόμενο της 'στρατευμένης' τεχνικής δεξιότητας. Όσο καλύτερα καταρτισμένος είναι κανείς, τόσο περισσότερο μπορεί να διαστρέψει τα στοιχεία που έχει στη διάθεσή του. Η πόλωση σε καίρια ζητήματα είναι μεγαλύτερη μεταξύ των 'ψαγμένων,' παρά μεταξύ των περαστικών.

Πέρα από την ποσοτική πλευρά του φαινομένου υπάρχει και ποιοτική πλευρά. Όταν ο κόσμος ακολουθεί και αναπαράγει υλικό που επιβεβαιώνει τις απόψεις του και προωθεί ομοϊδεάτες, μοιραία δημιουργούνται γκέτο και μονοκαλλιέργειες ιδεών που γίνονται όλο και πιο ακραίες. Όπως κάθε είδους αιμομιξία, κάθε ανταλλαγή απόψεων μέσα σε αυτούς τους θύλακες αποδυναμώνει τις θέσεις τους - η άμυνα ενάντια στην κριτική γίνεται όλο και περισσότερο όχι μέσω επιχειρημάτων αλλά με κοινωνικούς ελέγχους. Αυτό το βλέπουμε ξεκάθαρα όταν το κάνουν οι 'άλλοι'. Δεν το βλέπουμε ξεκάθαρα όταν το κάνουμε εμείς οι ίδιοι.

Φιλελευθερισμός με φετβάδες δεν γίνεται

Είναι πλέον κοινός τόπος το αφήγημα, ότι τάχα ο φιλελεύθερος κόσμος δεν μπορεί να μιλήσει στον υπόλοιπο επειδή ζει σε μια ελίτ φυσαλλίδα όπου ομοϊδεάτες μιλούν μεταξύ τους. Δεν είμαστε, λέει αυτή η λογική, παρά μια ηχηρή παρέα από επαγγελματίες καλοθελητές ειδικευμένους στο να προσβάλλονται για λογαριασμό τρίτων και να μιλούν υποτιμητικά στους αδαείς. Ή από καλοπληρωμένους και καλοδικτυωμένους αερητζίδες που λένε τεμπέλη και παράσιτο τον κάθε βιοπαλαιστή που δεν δέχεται να του καταστραφεί η ζωή για να τέμνονται στο σωστό σημείο οι καμπύλες της προσφοράς και της ζήτησης. Ο δε 'κανονικός' κόσμος αντιδρά στις εμμονές μας, που του επιβάλλονται συχνά έξωθεν και δια του νόμου, με όλο και πιο προκλητικές και ακραίες εκφράσεις των αντιλήψεών του.

Βλακείες. 

Συμφωνώ οτι χάθηκε κάπου στην πορεία η τέχνη της πειθούς. Είναι λειψός και τελικά επικίνδυνος ένας φιλελευθερισμός που στηρίζεται σε τετελεσμένα, σε εκβιαστικά διλήμματα, σε φιρμάνια και σε δικαστήρια. Όχι επειδή οι εξουσίες δεν οφείλουν να αναγνωρίζουν την πραγματικότητα, και να σέβονται και να υπερασπίζονται ελευθερίες και δικαιώματα. Αλλά επειδή τα νομικά και πολιτικά κεκτημένα χτίζονται πολύ πιο γρήγορα από ό,τι ωριμάζουν στη συνείδηση της κοινωνίας οι αντίστοιχες ιδέες. Ο φιλελευθερισμός δε όταν νικά κατά κράτος στα χαρτιά γίνεται νωθρός και θρασύς – αρχίζει να απαντά στον ανελεύθερο λόγο πρώτα με τον καταναγκασμό και μετά, πολύ αργά, με την πειθώ. Και όταν συμβεί δύο και τρεις φορές αυτό, άκομψα και δημόσια, ο πολύς κόσμος νοιώθει ότι βάλλεται.

Αν λοιπόν κάποια δικαιώματα κα κάποιες ευκαιρίες δεν μπορούν να περιμένουν να ωριμάσει η κοινωνία, καθήκον μας τότε είναι να κάνουμε πιο γρήγορα το ιδεολογικό μας έργο. Πιστεύω όμως ότι η κοινή γνώμη μπορεί να μεταστραφεί γρήγορα, ακόμη και σε ζητήματα που τον πολύ κόσμο τον ταράζουν βαθιά στην ψυχή του. Δείτε πχ πώς αντέδρασε ο Ελληνικός λαός στο θέμα των προσφύγων - πώς βρεθήκαμε από λαός βασικά φοβικός να είμαστε και πάλι, με τις όποιες παραφωνίες, φιλόξενοι και ανθρώπινοι.

Ποιό είναι λοιπόν το αφήγημά μας;

Το φιλελέ Think Tank Dianeosis δημοσιεύει από το 2015 μια σειρά από εξαιρετικές δημοσκοπήσεις σχετικά με τις πεποιθήσεις και τη νοοτροπία των Ελλήνων - ‘Τι Πιστεύουν οι Έλληνες’. Οι απαντήσεις των πολιτών είναι , ακούω, αντιφατικές – όλοι είμαστε λίγο καπιτάλες, λίγο σοσιαλιστές, λίγο αναρχικοί και λίγο φασίστες. Γνέφουμε όλοι αναγνωρίζοντας το πρόβλημα, μετράμε απογοητευμένοι τις λιγοστές ‘υγιείς δυνάμεις’ του τόπου και περιμένουμε την επόμενη έκδοση. Δεν είναι αυτή, νομίζω, η σωστή απάντηση.

Η απάντηση είναι ότι οι Έλληνες (και οι υπόλοιποι λαοί επίσης) δεν ‘πιστεύουν’ τίποτε, κι ως εκ τούτου μπορούν να αντιφάσκουν χωρίς πρόβλημα. Για να είμαι πιο σαφής – οι πολίτες μπορεί να έχουν ηθικές ή φιλοσοφικές αρχές που τους κατευθύνουν στις προσωπικές τους επιλογές. Αυτές όμως σπάνια τους είναι χρήσιμες σε μάκρο ζητήματα. Εκεί αντιθέτως οι πολίτες βρίσκουν το δρόμο τους συνδέοντας αφηγήματα – σκεφτείτε τον Ταρζάν να πετά πάνω από τη ζούγκλα πηδώντας από χορτόσχοινο σε χορτόσχοινο.

Όσοι έχετε διαβάσει το Dune του Frank Herbert θα θυμάστε τις μεθόδους των Bene Gesserit – οι ιεραπόστολοί τους πετούν από πλανήτη σε πλανήτη σπέρνοντας πιασάρικους και εύπλαστούς μύθους και προφητείες. Αιώνες μετά, οι πράκτορές τους όπου κι αν προσγειωθούν μπορούν να επικαλεστούν αυτά τα γνώριμα αρχέτυπα για να κερδίσουν την εμπιστοσύνη και το θαυμασμό των ντόπιων. Από τέτοια ‘βαθιά αφηγήματα’ αποτελείται η συνείδηση του μέσου πολίτη. Όποιος ξέρει να τα χειρίζεται, κυβερνά τον κόσμο.

Δεν γνωρίζω να έχουν χαρτογραφηθεί ποτέ σε βάθος τα βαθιά αφηγήματα και οι κοινωνικές ομάδες στις οποίες βρίσκουν απήχηση στην Ελλάδα. Αξίζει όμως. Η χώρα μας έχει φιλελέ αφηγήματα. Για να τα ανακαλύψουμε χρειάζεται να ξαναζωντανέψουμε και μια άλλη, παλιότερη μέθοδο από τις δημοσκοπήσεις και τα focus groups - χρειαζόμαστε φιλελέ λαογράφους.

Χρειάζεται οι φιλελέδες να καταλάβουμε σε βάθος ποια είναι τα βαθιά αφηγήματα που κουβαλάμε σα λαός, ποιά μπορούν να μεταστραφούν σε υγιείς δυνάμεις και ποιά πρέπει να τα πολεμήσουμε. Ιδανικά, αυτή τη δουλειά θα την είχαμε κάνει πριν την κρίση. Τίποτε όμως δεν είναι ιδανικό και πρέπει να πιάσουμε την άκρη του νήματος από κει όπου έχει κατρακυλήσει το τόπι.

Τις καλές εποχές το αφήγημα της Ευρώπης ήταν ένα τέτοιο βαθύ αφήγημα – η τουρκοκρατία και οι πόλεμοι μας απέκλεισαν από την φυσική μας κληρονομιά – εμείς δώσαμε τα φώτα στην Ευρώπη και από γκαντεμιά τώρα τα απολαμβάνουν άλλοι κι εμείς όχι. Ως Ευρωπαίοι πια και κάτω από τη θαλπωρή μιας διαρκούς ειρήνης, εύκολα θα ανακτήσουμε το χαμένο έδαφος. Δεν αρκούσε αύτο το αφήγημα – μόλις βρεθήκαμε σε (τεχνητή, πιστεύω) σύγκρουση με την Ευρώπη κατέρρευσε.

Για να ξανα-ανακαλύψουμε την τέχνη της πειθούς πρέπει να σκεφτούμε βαθιά, να ακούμε προσεκτικά, και να ξαναφτιάξουμε όχι το ένα, λειψό, αφήγημα της προόδου, αλλά πολλά και αλληλλεπικαλυπτόμενα αφηγήματα. Θέλω κι εγώ να συνεισφέρω σε αυτό το έργο.

[Συνεχίζεται]

* στατιστική-μπόνους: το 2009, σύμφωνα με την PISA, το 7.5% των μαθητών της επικράτειας είχαν πρόσβαση σε ρητορικούς ομίλους. 

The contribution of the Greek shipping industry: I agree with Reuters

To celebrate the blog's 6th birthday I proposed to take suggestions for fact-checks from the audience on Twitter and Facebook. This is the first of the two winning fact-checks (a recommendation from my friend P.S.) and it deals with the contribution of shipping to the Greek economy.

The starting point for this fact-check is a Reuters special report, The Greek Shipping Myth, which cast doubt on the employment and GDP contribution figures cited by the Greek shipping industry (and echoed by much of the domestic and foreign press - eg the FT here). The core claim in this report is that the industry's contribution to the Greek economy is inflated because ELSTAT calculates the impact of shipping firms differently than the statistical agencies of other countries do - in particular, it includes in its calculations value added and employment that arise (and possibly stay) in other countries.

In brief: Reuters' claim is correct in its essence. Shipping contributes less to the Greek economy than the industry lets people believe, if by 'economy' one reads 'gross national income' or 'domestic employment'. It is also likely that it contributes a lot less to GDP than the industry claims, although without further input from ELSTAT on the 'domesticity' of its product this is very hard to assess. The treatment of shipping in Greek national accounts is not as unique as Reuters claims - to some extent, countries such as the UK and Cyprus also appear to record it in similar ways. It does, however, contrast sharply to the way in which German statisticians measure the industry, and which is completely aligned with Reuters' preferred approach.

'We're gonna need a bigger boat'

At the risk of flirting with conspiracy theories, it is worth explaining the context of the Reuters publication and the FT coverage cited above. The last few years have seen sustained pressure applied on Greek governments to raise taxes on the shipping industry. It's not just parts of the Greek left gunning for oligarchs that are behind this, either. The German shipping industry is said (see BBC article above) to be lobbying for a review of the taxation of Greek shipping and the IMF appears to have been mulling proposals for further taxation for some time. Parallel to this, the European Commission has recently submitted a set of proposals to Greece on reforming maritime tax; basically asking us to bring some activities out of scope of our tonnage tax system as niche sectors were looking like they were gaming the system.

There is a big obstacle to taxing the shipping industry further, as a forty-year old law (27/1975), given a kind of special status by direct reference in article 107 of the Greek Constitution of 1975, exempts any company that pays tonnage tax in Greece from paying any other corporation tax or capital gains tax on sales of vessels. The exemption even extends to individual shareholders; see more details on p 173 here. This is pretty heavy stuff; it means it's not just difficult to apply income tax to the shipping industry and its owners - it's virtually unconstitutional. The last Greek government got around this problem in 2013 by establishing a voluntary agreement with the industry for an additional levy, and then formalising aspects of this into law. This idea had originally been mooted in 2011, during negotiations on the second Greek bailout, and effectively means that Greek-owned shipping companies (regardless of flag) will have paid an additional EUR420m between 2014 and 2017 (and no less than EUR105m in any given year). It's a steep increase from the amount of tonnage tax receipts which bring in a risible EUR12m per year (in 2012; historical data available here under the 'EL' tab), but clearly this amount still looks relatively modest.

In short: there's a hell of a lot of money to play for; national statisticians are swimming with sharks and Reuters' claim is that they've long avoided being eaten but cutting a deal.

Shipping in the ocean of data

It's not easy to pin down shipping in national statistics. This is because the full suite of relevant sectors are only really identifiable at the 4-digit level of the European Union's revised standard industry classification (NACE rev. 2). The NACE rev. 2 codes we're potentially looking at are as follows:

C: MANUFACTURING
30.11: Building of ships and floating structures
30.12: Building of pleasure and sporting boats
33.15: Repair and maintenance of ships and boats.

H: TRANSPORTATION AND STORAGE
50.10 Sea and coastal passenger water transport
50.20 Sea and coastal freight water transport
52.10 Warehousing and Storage activities for transportation
52:22: Support activities incidental to water transportation

N: ADMINISTRATIVE AND SUPPORT SERVICE ACTIVITIES
77.34: Rental and leasing of water transport equipment

Even then, there is room for discretion. I would be careful, for example, about counting anything other than codes 50.20, 52.22 and 77.34 under 'shipping,' though I would count almost all of the rest as part of the 'maritime cluster.' Even then, I would be careful about including code 52.10: it's likely that warehousing support for shipping is only a small part of this activity, and it's impossible to disaggregate it further. The 'maritime cluster' sectors are a unit of sorts because they share skillsets and specialisms, not to mention historical, corporate and family ties. But it's fair to say that the industries of the broader cluster respond to completely different sources of demand - demand for yachts, ferry rides and cruises isn't really driven by the currents of world trade, except perhaps in the very long term. And you wouldn't really expect to tax these sectors by tonnage, would you?

There is a shortcut that researchers can and do use to get round all of this detail. NACE rev 2 code 50 (water transport) is a 2-digit sector and therefore a lot more statistics are publicly available for it; and intermediate demand for water transport from other industries is a half-decent proxy for shipping output, because it strips out demand for passenger travel and other non-trade related things.

Using Eurostat's supply and use tables here it's relatively easy to see what the top line is for 'water transport services.' Some EUR15bn per year, as of 2010, almost all of it from exports. These are the latest and only figures on intermediate consumption of shipping that are available to us, but happily they are not the only figures we can rely on.

A missing middleman?

Contrary to what the Reuters piece might have you think, Greece's ELSTAT does not publish regular releases specifically on the contribution of the shipping industry, the way it might do with say, manufacturing or services as a whole. It does, however, quietly prepare estimates of value added and employment in the industry for the purposes of compiling national accounts - which in turn feed into estimates of Greek GDP and productivity.

You can see ELSTAT's breakdown of GDP components for 'water transport services' here. This roughly confirms the topline figure I cited above (15.8bn in 2010 but EUR12.8bn in 2014) and suggests that the industry contributed EUR5.7bn of value added in 2014, down from EUR6.6bn in 2010. ELSTAT provides the same figures on its own website here. Accounting for the sector's own demand for goods and services, in turn, produces this table, which suggests value added of EUR6.1bn in 2010.

That the two sets of figures are not identical is a little odd. They ought to be, yet you'll notice a difference of EUR460m in the industry's value added, as well as the fact that the water transport sector seems to buy almost no services (a puny EUR28m!) from itself. Now what could that be? It's rare, after all, for a broad (2-digit) industry to not use some of its own product as inputs. This to me is a first hint that there might be a missing middle-man in the GDP figures.

The impact studies

Unlike ELSTAT, the shipping industry and its observers in academia and think tanks are far from quiet about these estimates, and so the relevant figures have, in recent years, found their way into three widely-cited and to some extent overlapping assessments:

• The BCG Assessment of 2013 
• The IOBE assessment of 2013.
• The Oxford Economics Assessment of 2014.  

It is these studies that provide the chief lobby fodder of the industry, and they are genuinely loyal to the ELSTAT estimates. In fact, there is not much wrong with them at all. Like many 'impact' studies of course, they tend to bulk up their value added estimates with estimates of 'induced demand' and multiplier effects - ie value added in other industries that would not occur if it weren't for shipping. This tends to inflate the industry's contribution to a normally running economy, but might be a good approximation of what the country would miss out on if the entire industry were to decamp to other shores. This approach to impact assessment is not my main concern, or that of the Reuters investigation. Rather, I am concerned that Reuters may be right and that the core ELSTAT figures are probably wrong.

A Waste of Money at Reuters 

Reuters comes to this conclusion by looking at a sample of company accounts for the Greek offices of shipping companies - which account for only a fraction of the value added and employment claimed by the industry. This must have been a heroic effort - but also a wasted one, as ELSTAT had already done this work for them, The results can now be found in Eurostat's annual detailed enterprise statistics, and have two advantages: first, they go to enough detail to identify shipping extremely closely; second, they are limited to shipping enterprises registered in each member state.

• You can check out the service components of the maritime cluster here, along with their (very detailed) income, employment* and value added figures. 
• You may also want to add, for completeness, the activities of shipyards and dockyards, available separately here. 

*You need to be cautious and patient when it comes to the employment figures cited here. Unfortunately, quality control of the detailed enterprise statistics is relatively poor - on two occasions I've come across errors obvious to the naked eye, and shipping employment is one of them. Eurostat has a good record of acting on tip-offs about such errors but this is the holidays so it might take them a while to respond to my complaint.

Whatever the quality of the overall dataset, I believe there is no doubting the value added figures, which tally well with Reuters' estimates. The narrow shipping sector's value added (at factor costs) is barely EUR380m, based on output of EUR 735m. The broad maritime cluster produces a more respectable EUR936m of value added, on turnover of EUR2.2bn. Even this is miles away from the over EUR5bn that ELSTAT counts towards Greece's GDP. It's not just a question of inter-group transfers to companies outside Greece (like the ones, eg, that result in Starbucks' extremely low taxable income). If it were, then the top-line at least would presumably be the same regardless. It really looks like Reuters is right - the value added by shipping businesses registered abroad is being routinely included in the Greek GDP figures.

Then again, look again at the 2010 figures from enterprise stats - we may have our missing-middleman right there. At just over EUR400m, the sea freight sector's 2010 turnover from detailed enterprise statistics fits quite well into the gap between the two value added estimates for 'water transport' that we saw earlier - suggesting that the Greek-registered businesses (local management offices, in Reuters' article) produce nothing but intermediate inputs into an international industry that is somehow considered to be Greek in our annual accounts. Depending on whether the estimate is run top-down or bottom-up, they disappear into opaque group accounts, instead of being tallied up as intermediate inputs, which produces the two separate value-added estimates we saw earlier.

Whose billions?

But what of the other EUR5bn? Is that Greek domestic value added or is it foreign value-added? And if it is foreign value-added, does it give rise to Greek incomes? Consistent with Reuters' theory, it looks like ELSTAT treats all value added from firms of Greek beneficial ownership as domestic, and adds it to GDP. There may be some basis for this. The question of when a transaction can be said to arise in a country's territory and therefore to be domestic is not one of economics but of statistical convention, for which we turn to the wisdom of the ESA2010 manual:

Exports of goods occur without the goods crossing the country’s frontier in the following examples: (a) goods produced by resident units operating in international waters are sold directly to nonresidents in foreign countries. Examples of such goods are oil, natural gas, fishery products, maritime’s salvage; (b) transportation equipment or other movable equipment not tied to a fixed location; (c) goods after changing ownership, which are lost or destroyed before they have crossed the frontier of the exporting country; (d) merchanting, i.e. the purchase of a good by a resident from a non-resident and the subsequent resale of the good to another non-resident, without the good entering the merchant’s economy. Analogous cases occur for the imports of goods. 

Is Greece as unique in this treatment as Reuters alleges? It's easy to test this by comparing the contribution of water transport (remember, this is not quite 'shipping'!) to gross value added under the national accounts with its contribution under enterprise statistics. Here I'm keeping passenger transport in the calculation so that we're comparing 'water transport' with 'water transport' and can therefore isolate the effects of statistical treatment, country of registration and ownership structure.

The entire EU water transport sector makes about 26.5bn of value added under the detailed enterprise statistics approach (2013 figures here) but 34bn under the GDP approach (see here). Greece, the United Kingdom, Cyprus and Romania have enormous shipping sectors in their national accounts compared to detailed enterprise statistics, while Germany, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Italy provide roughly the same figures under both datasets. Finally, Belgium, Portugal and Estonia seem to have larger shipping sectors in enterprise statistics than in their national accounts.

But where does the money end up?

Whether you think their view of domesticity of shipping product is right or wrong, it's worth noting that ELSTAT makes no claim as to whether this domestic product produces national incomes. The industry claims this, on the basis of GDP figures, as it shouldn't. This is a fine distinction that Reuters fails to make but it does point to the true villain.

I make this introduction because there is a difference between GDP and Gross National Product (not to mention GDP and Gross National Income), and I wouldn't expect the two to be identical in the case of Greece .[I spoke too soon; in 2013 they were. But they don't have to be]. If shipping value added arises within Greece's borders, then there's no reason not to count it towards GDP. If it then immediately leaves the country to swell the coffers of foreign firms, then it won't count towards GNI, but that does not make the GDP calculation incorrect. Clearly, industry lobbyists have an interest in conflating GDP contributions with GNP/GNI contributions, but it is the latter that would give their argument against further taxation weight with the Greek authorities. Hence Reuters, despite a light mixup in terminology, is essentially right to question the numbers. The argument, however, cuts both ways. If so little of the sector's value is created in Greece, on what basis would the Greek government tax it?

Still, the industry claims that the disputed EUR5bn of value added somehow finds its way back to Greece. But in what way? There is no massive net inflow of funds to Greek business in the 'water transport' sector that would account for this difference. You can see this for yourselves here - a trifling EUR40m at last count, and net outflows in most years. There is, to be sure, a huge flow of remittances and wages earned abroad into Greece - nearly EUR1bn on last count. Unfortunately, it's hard to know how much of this is attributed to the shipping industry, and even if all of it were money from shipping employees abroad it wouldn't account for the full EUR5bn anyway.

Or does the money return as private flows of savings, consumption and charitable donations? The industry's flow of charitable giving is unrecorded but clearly massive. A single shipping-family foundation, for example, has been responsible for about EUR900m of easily-traceable charitable giving in Greece over the last ten years, of which at least a third has come post-crisis. It is said that much of the Greek ambulance service runs on donations from the shipping industry, and that many individual charities have benefited.

Without much more transparency from the notoriously secretive shipping families, it is impossible to answer this question. My guess is that the contribution of shipping to Greek national incomes is overstated by something in the order of EUR3-4bn. It also reflects very poorly on ELSTAT that they are not able to answer a straightforward question on how their value added figures are derived, and that they provide two different estimates of value added in the water transport sector (one in I-O tables and one in the national accounts, never mind the one in enterprise statistics). At the very least a methodological note would be very useful. Like, yesterday.

SOMEBODY TOOK TOO MUCH EXTASYNTAGMA!

Twitter friends alerted me this morning to a new batch of delusion being peddled by the pub crawl crowd in Greece. Readers will recall that pub crawl theories are a reference to one of the best analogies I’ve seen so far of Greek debt repayment delusions, originally reposted here:

When you’re having the time of your life and suddenly the lights go on and you’re told the party is over, what do you do? Someone pipes up and says: ‘why not go to the bar next to my place and keep this up?’ And the crowd goes ‘Yeeeah!’

We’ve tried getting Indiana Jones to bring back the stolen Nazi gold. We’ve tried free bailouts from the Russians, the Chinese and even the Swiss (WTF dude?). We’ve tried inventing nonexistent oceans of oil and gas, diamond deposits criss-crossing the land, pools of pure gold and uranium and of course LOL-ium¹³⁸, the radioactive isotope of LOL-ium found only in Greek defaultnik blogs, which causes permanent stupidity and whose half-life is a billion years.  Now that this crap has failed to catch on we come, finally, to the final pub, the one whose name is never far from the tip of the populist's tongue – the selective abolition of property rights.

Enter economist Dimitrios Kazakis, a recent darling of the Greek Indignados, who shot to fame with this video (titled: THE BEST ECONO-TECHNICAL ANALYSIS EVER MADE ABOUT GREECE, whatever ‘econo-technical’ might mean), which has gone floppily viral like an elderly streakers’ club. I was amazed actually because despite his abhorrent politics he generally sounded reasonable enough to me. Not any more. 

In short, Kazakis has written a post arguing that our debt problem could be substantially reduced if not eradicated by taxing the wealth of high-net-worth individuals in Greece. For data, he draws on the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook, which readers may recall from my half-finished scenario page here, though cunningly he’s omitted any hyperlink to the original so that his readers may reach their own conclusions. Anyway, I’ve included it above and in the comments section.  

With a grand flourish, Kazakis reveals that, according to Credit Suisse, private wealth in Greece is close to 300% of GDP, or an absolute $897bn as of 2010. This he pretends to find shocking but actually, since wealth is a stock figure and income is a flow figure it’s fairly normal. If anything, given that the average economically active life of a Greek person spans decades, it’s only fair that accumulated wealth should be a multiple of GDP. That has been the way of every economy since the industrial revolution.

Anyway, back to the wealth issue, and the CS report. Turn to p. 72, do a little population math, and you will see that of the total household wealth in Greece, a net $162bn as of 2010 ($339bn assets minus $176.5bn liabilities) was in financial assets, and the remaining $736bn was in non-financial assets. This, by the way, represents a 72% rise in private wealth per adult between 2000 and 2010.

Naive readers will predictably recoil with shock at the massive numbers. It must be the rich weighing this upwards. He must know what he’s talking about, look at how big his numbers are! Actually, at under $100k, mean adult wealth in Greece is equivalent to a modest house owned between two people. And home ownership in Greece is a staggering 84%.

This is where, pumped up on hopium, or perhaps Extasyntagma, Kazakis bids a fond farewell to reality by assuring his readers that:

...these data are derived from private wealth management firms and refer only to those with enough wealth to merit management by professional asset managers. This means that this wealth total does not include all of those who hold some bonds by way of savings, or some real estate for their security in old age. The data we provide refer to about 60 thousand Greek residents and this refers to assets held at home (whether liquid or illiquid), which appear nowhere and are registered nowhere. 

I am tempted to add: ‘Trust me, I’m an economist.’

Actually, as it happens, he either failed to read the report properly or is lying deliberately. You can tell that the 897bn figure refer to the whole population by looking at pg. 84 and multiplying mean wealth per adult with the number of adults to derive the same 897bn figure. Moreover, Credit Suisse do explain, in pp. 11-14, where their data on Greece come from. For financial assets and liabilities, it’s actually Eurostat, whose tables do make for interesting reading.   

Table 1: Greek household financial assets (in millions of Euros)

Table 2: Greek household financial liabilities (in millions of Euros)
 


CS’s estimates also rely on extrapolations of publicly available data, using a power law function to simulate the tail end of the wealth distribution – the ultra rich. Credit Suisse are so unconvinced of the quality of their country-by-country estimates of the wealth of high net worth (HNW) individuals (their target audience) that they simply refuse to report on them. In fact, they only seem willing to report estimated numbers (using the methodology described above or international figures at the super-aggregate level. They make these points explicitly in the report, so to assume that Greece has been an exception is a little disingenuous. 

So to summarise, Kazakis has either misrepresented his data in order to support a conclusion he was always going to get to anyway, or has been blinded by his prejudice into seeing only what he already believed: that we must seize the assets of high net worth individuals. Why not just say that and be done with, sparing us the amateur dramatics?

Something good did, however, come out of this.

With this admittedly misguided post, Kazakis has scored a spectacular own goal, exposing one fact which, to my profound embarrassment, I had not thought to check. You see, as you can tell by glancing at pp. 84 to 86, both Argentina and Equador, the poster-children of the defaultnik movement in Greece, have more unequal distributions of wealth than Greece, as measured by the Gini coefficient of wealth distribution. So does Chavez’ Venezuela, the darling of carefree populists. So do Communist China and Vietnam, who are nobody’s darlings in Greece but at least they seem to be making socialism produce some gains for the actual people.  This is not to say that Greece’s distribution of income or wealth is optimal (a lot of it is still driven by systemic distortions supported by the state) but if the premise is that it is suboptimal because it is extremely unequal, then that premise needs be revisited. Bear in mind here that CS has an incentive to over-estimate, not under-estimate the concentration of wealth in Greece and indeed in all countries as extreme inequality makes more money for the wealth management division.

In fact, since we’re talking defaults again, it appears to me that, out of 13 countries that were in foreign-currency default in the past decade as some would have us do right now, ten now sport wealth gini coefficients worse than Greece’s (source). - Note: some people seem to be getting confused here. The Gini coefficients comes from the CS paper cited by Kazakis. It's only the default info that comes from the source. PLEASE read the blog properly before commenting.

Perhaps they were even worse to begin with, but my take on this is slightly different. My take on this is that default is followed by massive inflation (yes, trolls, that's what happens when you leave a hard currency for a softer one, especially if it's a good idea in terms of competitiveness), and inflation is a cross-subsidy from savers and wage earners to investors (the cleverer ones at least, but then the richer ones can afford cleverer asset managers too). In a more financially developed country like ours the effect would be heavier, not lighter.

And as one of my commentators points out below, other countries usually held up as exemplars, like Denmark or Sweden, both absolutely kick-ass countries by the way, also have more unequal wealth distributions than Greece. So do places like the UK, the US etc, where it could be argued that a lot more wealth is stashed offshore because the financial system is so much more developed. In fact, as another less approving commentator points out, some inequality can be the result of innovation and enterprise and is probably acceptable.

To rephrase: the Greek wealth distribution is actually pretty equal by global standards. And that's that really. 

A note on the Gini coefficient: 

As per one comment made below, a Gini coefficient is a property of a statistical distribution. There is a wealth Gini, an income Gini (which some people have used in critiques to this article), a longevity Gini and in fact a Gini coefficient for just about anything you can describe through a statistical distribution.So let's please try not to confuse the matter. Credit Suisse's Gini coefficients refer to wealth; because a lot of the consumption of the typical household is fixed, savings rise disproportionately with increased income, and therefore income Gini coefficients tend to be much lower than wealth Gini coefficients. As readers of this blog know, Greece's income Gini, despite being almost half the wealth Gini, makes us a very unequal country in income terms. 


For further reading on how Greek fiscal policy affected income (but not wealth) inequality measures in Greece, check out this post if you haven't already.



UPDATE: Kazakis has issued a Call for the Immediate Formation of a United People's Front (Ε.Πα.Μ.). Good luck.

U CAN HAZ DICTATURZ!

A sensationalist title (some of you are biting already), but do bear with me. This will be a very brief post.

I've heard a good deal in the last two years about how Greece has been hijacked by thugs who have been fleecing us for all we're worth. I've got some sympathy for this statement, though you won't be surprised to find I interpret it slightly differently from many other commentators. Also, I like to back up what I say with evidence. So here goes.

Some of you may have come across the Political Compass: a clever little test that, instead of looking simply at where one sits on the left-right spectrum, combines this with a reading of where one sits on the authoritarian-liberal spectrum: whether they want freedom to prosper or suffer according to their choices or a measure of state guarantees that no matter what crap life throws their way they will be given some basics and a helping hand. I took the test a couple of years back and the result will not surprise you, although my friends' results might.

Now you might think that the libertarian corner is a pretty lonely place, the political naughty step reserved for bloodthirsty neoliberals. But in fact you may find, upon reflection, that I am in very good company. Consider for instance the Political Compass rating of the European ruling parties as of 2008:

Not too shabby, and probably about right actually - although I bet some of these governments will have since shifted to the Left, if they know what's good for them. Now, if only we could sort of replicate this for the entire Greek people - what a lovely insight it would give us. Turns out we (sort of) can. Astute readers may remember this post, where I used data from the 2008 Survey of European Values (which you can get for free here) to look at Greek attitudes towards foreigners.

So I did some snooping around tonight to see what else I could dig up and managed to draw up a nice little grid of the Greek population according to where they sit on this spectrum. You see the Survey asks respondents whether they prefer to trade off freedom for equality or vice versa and where they would place themselves on the Left to Right spectrum, on a scale of 1 (far left) to 10 (far right). I also threw in an extra measure. I assumed that everyone who responded 'Neither' to the 'Freedom v. Equality' question is not comfortable with tradeoffs in general. I also assumed that everyone who rated themselves 5 or 6 (the two middle points) on the Left-Right scale also has trouble accepting tradeoffs. I know I'm goint to get some stick from people over the latter assumption but I'll stick to it. You have a 10-point scale to choose from dude. WTF does 5 mean? Or 6 for that matter. Give me a break.

Run this analysis and you get the following grid breakdown of the Greek population (weighted figures, thank you very much) as of 2008, just before the 30 years' worth of shit we pretended not to see hit the massive, country-sized fan we spent 30 years building so we couldn't smell said shit. It looks like this:

I've done the math for you too:

• Old school socialists (including communists): 13.5%
• Liberals (modern definition, including but mostly not anarchists): 12.6%
• Fascists (big or small f): 10.2%
• Libertarians: 16.7%
• People who think they don't have to make tradeoffs: 49% 47% (The figures in the pic add up to 100 even if my sloppy, early morning sums don't. Still, many thanks for the correction!) 

Dear god, we never stood a chance... The people that don't believe in tradeoffs would decide any election hands down. That's why we can't help but elect whatever muppet tells us that 'there is money' (Yorgo), or that his first priority will be the following five priorities (Karamanlis Jr). These are the people that have run Greece to the ground with their stupid voting for years, making a mockery of elections. They are, in fact, collectively, the real Greek dictators.

ZIRZI-RISING: @zirzirikos BLOGS GREECE

Readers may, for some time, have noticed that my old friend @Zirzirikos is credited as a contributor to this blog. You may have been wondering whether he actually writes here as all. In fact, he does not; he's just doing me a favour as it is comforting to know someone can jump in and take over one's blog should one be flattened by killer cucumbers.

However, as a seasoned Greece-watcher, blogger, technologist, and debater, it was only a matter of time before @Zirzirikos put virtual pen to virtual paper and started writing about the Greek question. Unlike myself, he's not afraid of semi-literate trolling so he writes in Greek.

I am therefore proud to direct Greek-speaking readers to his new blog, Ζιρζιρίσματα, dedicated to commentary on the Greek situation from the point of view of a Greek living abroad. I cannot be sure that @zirzirikos' blog will espouse similar views to mine (our conversations suggest otherwise on several topics) but I'm sure he will argue them as well as anyone could. I'll be checking regularly for inspiration. 

LONDON-BASED LOLGREEKS: GET UR TICKETS *NOW*

The euro, its central bank and economic governance

Page contents > Ticket Information | Podcasts | Twitter | CPD | Accessibility

The Stamp Memorial Lecture

Date: Monday 13 June 2011
Time: 2-3.15pm
Venue:  LSE campus, venue tbc to ticketholders
Speaker: Jean-Claude Trichet
Chair: Peter Sutherland

The lecture is in memory of Josiah Charles Stamp, an alumnus and former governor of LSE.

The recent financial crisis has been a turbulent period for policy-makers around the world. Originating in and mostly affecting the financial sector, it has forced central banks to take unprecedented steps to contain the situation and its fallout for the real economy. Overall, this has been achieved, and economic activity is gradually recovering around the world. Risks remain, however, including systemic risks, and the advanced economies are still a long way from achieving sustainable economic growth and job creation.

Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the European Central Bank (ECB), explains how his institution reacted swiftly to the challenges of the financial crisis through non-standard measures. However, at the same time, it has continued to remain faithful to its mandate of maintaining price stability in the euro area over the medium term through standard monetary policy measures. Looking ahead, Mr Trichet also argues that the unwavering actions of the ECB and its decision-making bodies need to be paralleled by a quantum leap in the economic governance of the euro area. The citizens of the euro area want stronger and better coordination of economic and financial policies and are calling for governments to deliver a deeper and more effective economic union.

Born in Lyon, Jean-Claude Trichet is an "Ingénieur civil des Mines", a graduate of the Institut d'études politiques de Paris and holds a Bachelor's degree in economics. He worked in the competitive sector from 1966 to 1968, attended the Ecole nationale d'administration in 1969 and was appointed "Inspecteur adjoint des Finances" in 1971.
He was then assigned to various posts at the Ministry of Finance in the General Inspectorate of Finance and later in the Treasury Department, where in 1976 he became Secretary General of the Interministerial Committee for Improving Industrial Structures (CIASI).

Jean-Claude Trichet was made an adviser to the cabinet of the Minister of Economic Affairs (René Monory) in 1978, and then an adviser to the President of the Republic (Valery Giscard d'Estaing) in the same year. In this capacity, he worked on issues relating to energy, industry, research and microeconomics from 1978 to 1981. He subsequently became Deputy Director of Bilateral Affairs at the Treasury Department from 1981 to 1984, Head of International Affairs at the Treasury and was Chairman of the Paris Club (sovereign debt rescheduling) from 1985 to 1993. In 1986, he directed the Private Office of the Minister of Economic Affairs, Finance and Privatisation (Edouard Balladur), and in 1987 he became Director of the Treasury. In the same year, he was appointed Censor of the General Council of the Banque de France and Alternate Governor of the IMF and the World Bank. He was Chairman of the European Monetary Committee from 1992 until his appointment as Governor of the Banque de France in 1993. He was the Chairman of the Monetary Policy Council of the Banque de France as of 1994, a member of the Council of the European Monetary Institute from 1994 to 1998 and thereafter a member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank. At the end of his first term as Governor of the Banque de France, he was reappointed for a second term.

Jean-Claude Trichet was elected Chairman of the Group of Ten (G10) Governors on 29 June 2003. He was appointed President of the European Central Bank in October 2003, taking up the position the following month. In 2010 he became Chair of the European Systemic Risk Board.

Suggested hashtag for this event for Twitter users: #lseuro

Ticket Information

This event is free and open to all however a ticket is required. One ticket per person can be requested on Monday 6 June. 

LSE students and staff are able to collect one ticket from the New Academic Building SU shop, located on the Kingsway side of the building from 10.00am on Monday 6 June.

Members of the public, LSE staff and alumni can request one ticket via the online ticket request form which will be live on this weblisting after 10.00am on Monday 6 June.

The ticket request form will be online for around an hour from going live. If after an hour we have received more requests than there are tickets available, the line will be closed, and tickets will be allocated on a random basis to those requests received. If after an hour we have received fewer requests than tickets available, the ticket line will stay open until all tickets have been allocated.

LIVING THE LOL IN CYPRUS

It's always good to be able to showcase the work of a successful friend. These days however the work of Alex Apostolides over at http://www.econcyma.blogspot.com/ is proving particularly useful. Alex specialises in the economic history of his native Cyprus, but also Malta, which is now making a thoroughly savoury name for itself by opposing Libyan sanctions.

Reading his latest post I realised I haven't followed the Cypriot economy very well in the past two years, lulled to complacency by my prejudices. They have been as follows:

• because Cyprus is a much smaller country, it is easier to avoid enormous amounts of administrative waste and corruption there than it is in Greece.
  
  
• because Cyprus has had British influences to those institutions which Greece borrowed from the French or Germans, it should be a more flexible economy than Greece in many ways and have a more flexible civil administration.
  
  
• the looming presence of a major national threat has focused the minds of Cypriots a little bit more on the greater good and made consensus a much more acceptable practice in their country than it is in Greece.

I have other prejudices of course that are not so positive. But the ones above allowed me to ignore economic news coming out of Cyprus in the conviction that our funny-sounding cousins would muddle through.

It turns out I am wrong. Over to you Alex! 

SUSTAINABILITY EPIC FAIL

The most dedicated of readers may remember this post from our more innocent pre-bailout times, when I noted:

We in Greece do not have to choose between socialism and climate change denial - we believe in nothing and can therefore disbelieve whatever we like.

This was the story of our Minister for Climate Change being told off by our energy unions in a remarkably sub-human way for not being too keen on Brown Coal – our ‘national fuel’ apparently.

Well, she’s in trouble again. She’s come up with an outrageous idea was that it should be illegal to build outside residential zones if they have been included in the Natura programme for the preservation of pristine animal habitats.

Predictably, half the Socialist party pounced on her, citing over-sensitive regulation that will finish off our struggling construction sector, whose output is down 21% from the last year.  This strikes me as odd – construction is down because people don’t have money to invest, because house prices are falling and because banks won’t lend as easily. When demand is the problem, deregulation doesn’t really provide much by way of stimulus. Right?

Even more hilarious is the manner, once again, in which the Minister’s suggestion was dismissed. Giannis Vouros, yet another actor-cum-politician popping his greasy locks above the parapet these days, was hilariously quoted as saying:

'This ecology stuff is all very nice but it should not be allowed to turn into eco-fetishism. We can’t expect [people to] sit and think oh where are the pelicans going to be laying their eggs, and derail an entire development plan’

Even so, my friends.

This is a dilemma for me because I find the case for protecting animal habitats compelling. On the face of it, it is much easier to do this if there are clear land use regulations in place. However, I also believe that the less power the Government has, the better. I’ll suspend judgement until we’ve considered the evidence. I haven’t followed very much of that with regards to degradation of animal habitats, but I know a little about the deforestation literature, which works in a similar way.

The evidence suggests that an area is much more likely to be deforested if the level of prosperity of its inhabitants is high, or if the area is mostly agricultural. This is corroborated by evidence that arson is more likely when GDP per capita rises and fuel and wheat prices increase.

Here’s the trick though: the evidence suggests demand for urban and rural living space did not lead to deforestation. Demand for quality, expensive dwellings, however, did. We know because deforestation grows with GDP per capita but not urban demand and because housing booms correlate with deforestation. If the same holds for habitat destruction, it would explain why the Socialist MPs (rightly) point out that regulation will hit construction – because they are referring to demand from well-to-do citizens who have not been affected by the recession.

Of course, structure also matters. The municipal and public ownership of peri-urban forest certainly made it easier to reclassify for other uses (this is important because illegal land use is not very strongly correlated with deforestation), not least by allowing corrupt officials to facilitate the process. On the other hand, deforestation tended to go down as the number of hotel beds increased. Tourists don’t like fires or wastelands and hoteliers don’t like losing money.

So who’s eating up our forests? Subsidised farmers and demand for land by rich folks – through deforestation and arson. How do we keep them from doing this? By making each forest someone’s livelihood (if you can’t stomach making it someone’s property, which I understand), saying no to farm subsidies and of course fighting corruption at the local level.

Now I wonder if the natura habitats can be protected in a similar way.

I CAN HAZ STATEHOOD?

Foreign readers may not have noticed a key piece of Greek news this week, amidst coverage of the 'successful' Spanish, Portuguese and Greek debt auctions (courtesy of the ECB, Japan and friends), Portugal's direct sale of EUR1.1bn to the Chinese, as well of course as the news that all of the Maghreb and beyond is in flames over sugar and other commodity shortages. This is of course important news as it demonstrates that the world is about to go to shit big time, but the news coming out of Greece should worry people just as much.

The cover story is that TV-heartthrob-cum-mayor Apostolos Gletsos has taken it upon himself to tear down a toll barrier with a tractor after realising his constituents had to pay tolls to travel within the municipality. Clearly an absurd proposition to which the good mayor rightly objects, but his very photogenic piece of activism comes in the context of a nationwide movement against tolls, amply supported by Greece's abundance of orange blogs. Members of the movement need only shove the toll barriers aside.

At first I did not realise how many people were involved in the movement, until I heard that toll operators had applied for permission to photograph and invoice maverick drivers and that the government had announced they intend to renegotiate road maintenance contracts. Before I knew it, all manner of institutions had thrown their varying weights behind the movement, from the Communist Party to a popular football club and even some elements within our ruling Socialist Party.

The arguments employed by the movement vary substantially, but those that make sense tend to be as follows:

1. The original licences granted for the building or maintenance of roads were abusive - allowing contractors to levy tolls long after their original outlay plus reasonable profit had been recouped and refusing to reward frequent users with a monthly or annual scheme. This is probably a fair point as fixed-term concessions have been shown to have this effect under demand uncertainty. There is also fairly robust evidence that, at 85% of total motorway costs, capital accounts for a larger share of the cost of running Greece's roads than those of other countries. But the solution, as this study proves, is to adjust the concession terms, not to refuse payment.
   
2. The Greek Constitution guarantees the free movement of citizens in the Greek state and any infrastructure built with the people's money should be free at the point of use. This argument is faulty to the extent that all arguments in favour of free-at-the-point-of-purchase are: it is simply a demand for subsidies which may or may not be justified by the externalities produced by road transport. However it does raise the valid point that road regulation is only a partial substitute for public ownership and cannot ensure universal coverage. In fact, even though roads are a classic public good, their benefits even through externalities are much more likely to accrue to their users and neighbours. Therefore, some element of tolling and local authority funding needs to be maintained at all times.
   
3. Each driver pays road duties, ostensibly in order to buy access to the road network. This should cover all roads in the land. This would be a reasonable argument if tolls hadn't been common in Greece for decades. A person my age has known tolls to exist all of their lives and older drivers will have known them as long as the fancy motorways they helped finance. It is not part of the social contract, so to speak, that road duties equal access to all roads.
    
4. The toll system creates abusive monopolies as there are few safe alternatives to the tolled motorways. This is also a fair point, and in fact it has been proven that tolls can reduce road safety outcomes overall.
   
5. The system whereby these contracts were allocated is corrupt and therefore all contracts are null. While corruption is undoubtedly a problem in Greece, much more evidence would be required before the contract for an individual section of motorway can be challenged, and it should be up to the law to decide when and to what extent such challenges can take place.
   
6. The quality of Greek motorways is very poor and thus current toll levels are not justified. Perhaps; subjective evaluations for the Global Competitiveness Report suggest that Greece's roads are, at no. 57, worse than Rwanda's. This would be a good argument for renegotiating contracts; in fact, periodic quality assessments should have been incorporated into the incentives provided by the original contract. But it's not a good argument for not paying at the point of use, unless the road is in fact unsafe or unusable.
    

The problem with this movement is that, frankly, the Greek state needs to honor its contractual obligations. We collectively chose, at some point in the past, to saddle our future selves (and our children) with the cost of paying for these roads rather than pay tax for them. Now we don't want to pay the tolls either. Well, roads don't fund or maintain themselves.  If this movement manages to do what it has set out to do, it will demonstrate that, in some cases, the people can effectively repeal the signature of the Greek state and default on any collective obligation. This is not a statement to be made lightly: our credibility depends on an implicit commitment not to abuse our ability to default.

The state's credibility also depends on its ability to impose its commitments upon the people - this is essentially equivalent to its ability to regulate or levy tax. Anything that weakens investors' perception of these two is bad for Greece because it means fewer people will be willing to finance our continuing deficits.