Arianna appeared on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS to discuss Greece's economic issues.
"There is no work," she said. "You have 40% youth unemployment...these are people who feel they have no hope for the future."
She also weighed in how Greece might tackle its problems.
"Greece may decide to leave the euro simply in order to prevent civil unrest and to be able to start growing the economy again," she said.
WATCH (via CNN):
That’s a cool 56+ BN EUR which Greece has required in new external funding during 2011. The current account deficit will not get much lower going forward and the capital flight may not, either.
What Greece needs is a long-term economic development plan which aims at reducing the current account deficit and attracting foreign investment while at the same time stopping capital flight!
http://klauskastner.blogspot.com/2012/01/breaking-news-100-haircut-for-greece.html
1) On looming Greek debt economic crisis and its probable spillover cascading effects on integrity of Euro and cohesiveness of Eurozone, the two counterpoint issues are: debt + austerity, and social unrest + revolution.
SteveRattner: "Fundamentally, the Greeks have to pull themselves together and get to work !"
Arianna: "But there's NO WORK ! Greek youth unemployment is at 40% ... Social unrest is ... (approaching revolution) "
Arianna had been to the public square last summer multiple times. She has Cambridge Master's degree on economics. She's journalist + entrepreneur. She speaks Greek with people on the ground. She KNOWS what she's talking about. She's focussing light on the truth: Austerity alone won't work, and will lead to more social unrest towards revolution. Rattner sounds exactly like American version of Marie Antoinette: "Why don't the Greeks eat cakes ?"
2) 3 panel members suggest the implicit assumption that ratcheting up economic pressure on Iran towards war is only rational way to go. Arianna points out the disastrous precedent of invasion of Iraq had direct consequence on Iran's attitude. That's eminent sense of the obvious predicament behind Iran's intransigent position. US had invaded and occupied Iraq on western border, and Afghanistan on the eastern border of Iran, both with disastrous consequences. Pressure towards war on Iran on the same neocon model would be unmitigated disaster many times over those of Iraq and Afghanistan.
As far as I'm concerned, Iceland is the only nation affected by this crisis that got the response right.
When Greece defaults and exits the EURO, I hope it pays heed to the Icelandic template.
It is really a shame because they are very clever people, but outsmart themselves figuring out how not to pay taxes
I also believe that there is exploitation of the situation meant to sink the Euro to prop up the dollar, especially since China and Russia are no longer using the dollar in their oil import and export.
To make matters worse, now Greece will no longer be able to import oil from Iran at a lower price. How ridiculous is that? It's again part of the plan to keep sinking this country further and drag the EU down with it.
Why don't Europeans wake up and see what's going on here?? Start thinking like Russia and China, disengage from the DOLLAR and U.S. foreign policy and trade with Iran!!!
It's not clear how sinking the Euro would help to rescue the USDollar. Perhaps you could explain and elaborate your view on that.
Humanity needs to take more and more oil off the market so that prices rise dramatically thereby rapidly increasing demand for alternative technologies, primarily solar and wind, while there is still time to do so.
With so few having sufficient technological and scientific expertise to understand the seriousness of the problem and how incredibly short the time window there is to solve it, many scientists are becoming increasingly pessimistic of humanities chance for survival. Keep in mind that in 50 to 100 years, at the current rate of warming, which so far has been consistently underestimated by all climatic models, Kansas City, which lies at the center of the US breadbasket will be experiencing temperatures in excess of 100 F for more than 100 days out of the year. A dramatic fall off in world agricultural productivity is unfolding, as farmers in the Ukraine, China, Northern Mexico, West Texas, and Oklahoma can attest.
While world leaders fiddle, the world burns.