Five years of a crippling austerity programme imposed by the IMF/EU/ECB Troika in exchange for financial support, saw Greece and its people plumb the depths of poverty and desperation.
Unemployment skyrocketed especially among the youth, many of whom had been highly educated at the expense of the state, suicide rates increased dramatically and Greece's middle class was almost eradicated overnight as a new class of nouveau-pauvre came on the scene.
People who had had a job, a house and a car suddenly found themselves on the street when unemployment knocked on the door.
The brain drain of Greece's young educated people migrating abroad looking for a better tomorrow didn't help the situation. The tomorrow seemed to take forever as in the interests of fiscal tightening and balancing, measure after measure and tax after tax was imposed, leading to a vicious circle of economic restriction, aka austerity, and little or no growth or hope.
2014 was to be the first year that Greece would see some growth. Tourism boomed, Greece was the no 1 place to be and to all intents and purposes, it looked as if Greece was finally going to start on the road to recovery.
Wrong.
The meeting with the Troika in Paris in November of 2014 was fruitless.
The grey-suited number-crunchers known as the Troika decided that there hadn't been enough progress on the structural reforms and that it would not give its approval for the next tranche of funds due under the bailout agreement. Its insistence on additional measures and the government's inability to pass new measures, forced Greek Prime Minister Samaras' hand and, after Parliament's failure to elect a new President of the Republic on 29 December 2014, led to a call for early elections.
On 25 January the Greek people gave the left-wing party, SYRIZA, the mandate to govern Greece. In the months that followed the new Greek government has tried to turn things in its favour but has not succeeded, despite coming to an agreement in the Eurogroup meeting of 20 February 2015.
The Greek crisis is much like a crazy roller coaster ride, one minute we're up, the next down and none of us are quite sure if it will derail or not.
As pressure mounts on the Greek Government to sign a solution and move forward, we thought we would ask the question of our readers and the public...
SHOULD WE STAY OR SHOULD WE GO?
Please vote and share so that others can too!
At Global Greek World, We ♥ Greece...and it shows!
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