Zoe Georganta is a professor of applied econometrics and productivity at the University of Macedonia. She also consults with businesses in Greece and abroad. In 2010, the Greek parliament appointed her to the Greek Statistical Authority, the agency that calculates and publishes the numbers of the country on deficit, debt and other vital information.
In 2010, the Greek Statistical Authority also got its chairman, Andreas Georgiou, an employee of the International Monetary Fund. This incensed Georganta and her colleagues, professional statisticians who, like the rest of the Greeks, have been living the dreadful consequences of their country being under the thumb of IMF and its two European partners -- the European Commission and the European Central Bank, collectively going under the name of troika.
In a Dec. 9, 2012 radio interview, Georganta says Georgiou is pushing the IMF agenda, not the interests of Greece. She alleges a far more serious charge against the former prime minister, George Papandreou. She says that, in 2009, he "artificially augmented" the Greek deficit and, otherwise, indulged in an unprecedented and irresponsible attack against the country he was heading, saying that Greece was corrupt and untrustworthy. This toxic rhetoric did have its intended effect -- forcing Greece into the "structural reform" of the troika with the result of Greece losing her sovereignty and being impoverished to conditions of extreme poverty.
In addition, Georganta alleges that Papandreou's behavior has had the approval of the EU and the IMF, which now are using Greece to test their anti-labor standards. If this experiment succeeds in Greece and the country is dismembered into "free trade" zones, the troika will then inject its Greek medicine onto Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy.
Georganta is not a conspiracy theorist. She is a respected and published scholar. She is straightforward about the foreign influence wrecking Greece under the guise of statistics modernization and debt management by, of all people, European and American allies of Greece.
Her allegations are being taken seriously. According to a Jan. 20, 2012 report by Athens News, the Greek financial prosecutor, Grigoris Peponis, recommended the Greek government investigate if Papandreou and members of his administration might have tinkered the government's statistics to "inflate the Greek deficit."
As for Papandreou, one day he may be put on trial, though it's a far-fetched possibility now that he is in the comfortable environment of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Georganta recognizes the weaknesses of the Greek economy -- practically no industry, limited exports, tax evasion by those who have the most money, and over-reliance on tourism. Second, she lashes at the troika for "creative accounting," arbitrariness and lack of transparency.
It is possible, then, that the EU is no longer the EU but a subsidiary of the big banks. They not only want back every penny they lent Greece, but they want to radically reorganize Europe and the rest of the world to their advantage -- crush the Greeks to lessen labor costs in the lucrative European market.
But why is the IMF involved in an intra-European dispute? Because the IMF has a huge experience in reorganizing Africa and Asia -- the so-called Third World -- and converting the two continents into capitalism-friendly colonies.
Africa is now hungry because its best land is producing cash crops for the euro-holders and Asia is producing all these gadgets and clothes for the dollars of America. Exporting American jobs to China has been immensely profitable to Chinese capitalists as well as to American corporations. Not a little credit for this strategy goes to IMF.
However, do we want this world that resembles medieval feudalism? Should we continue giving unlimited power to giant conglomerates that sacrifice societies and, indeed, the Earth on the altar of money?
The alternative for me is to support the Greeks. President Obama ought to order IMF out of Greece. And the Europeans ought to demand the end of the killing "austerity" both in Greece and elsewhere. If only American and European corporations join Greek companies, they could invest in the development of the country's mineral wealth. That would more than pay off the Greek debt. Out of this struggle, we will have more, not less, democracy and prosperity. We will also have more economic justice while putting a leash on hubris -- break down to modest size businesses banks and other corporations "too large to fail."
Recreating feudalism is not an option, especially in Europe and America. The Greeks would fight to the death defending their country. In addition, neither civilized societies nor the Earth can afford the policies the troika is pushing in Greece.