George Papandreou, the former Greek PM, had a splendid chance a couple of days ago to come clean on the two fundamental errors that cost him his legacy and pushed Greece down a hideous rabbit hole: (a) Failing to acknowledge that the Greek state and banking sector was bankrupt, making preemptive haircuts essential (instead, his government opted for ‘extending and pretending’ by means of the largest loan in history, given on conditions of massively shrinking the bankrupt entity’s GDP!) And (b) to call for a fraudulent referendum on the 2nd Bailout, for the purposes of blackmailing voters into backing another dead-end ‘rescue’. Sadly, Mr Papandreou, eighteen months after have been scorned by Greek society, failed to utilise the excellent opportunity that Steve Paikin gave him to perform a redemptive Mea Culpa. Instead, he portrayed himself as a selfless saviour who put Greece on the road to sound government and meaningful reforms while, at the very same time, suggesting that Greece’s cleptocracy remains in full control of the country (jump to around 25′ where Mr Papandreou is responding to a statement by investigative reporter Kostas Vaxevanis – whose travails as a result of facing the cleptocrats down we have discussed here before).
See his response to a clip that Steve played of my assessment of his referendum strategy (which caused his resignation) at around the 14th minute of the video below – and read the post I had written at the time entitled: It is time to resign Mr Papandreou. For that interview of mine, again with Steve Paikin, see below.
