Greeks Vote to Approve Their Own Suicide While the Rest of the EU Applaudes

Their parliament has approved the new austerity plan, which will allow them to borrow money and give it to German, French, and British banks.

If I were running Greece, I would start a program of aggressive instruction in German for the populace.

If the Germans want to make Greece uninhabitable, perhaps they should accommodate the refugees.

In the meantime, Athens burns:

After violent protests left dozens of buildings aflame in Athens, the Greek Parliament voted early on Monday to approve a package of harsh austerity measures demanded by the country’s foreign lenders in exchange for new loans to keep Greece from defaulting on its debt.

Though it came after days of intense debate and the resignation of several ministers in protest, in the end the vote on the austerity measures was not close: 199 in favor and 74 opposed, with 27 abstentions or blank ballots. The Parliament also gave the government the authority to sign a new loan agreement with the foreign lenders and approve a broader arrangement to reduce the amount Greece must repay to its bondholders.

The new austerity measures include, among others, a 22 percent cut in the benchmark minimum wage and 150,000 government layoffs by 2015 — a bitter prospect in a country ravaged by five years of recession and with unemployment at 21 percent and rising.

But the chaos on the streets of Athens, where more than 80,000 people turned out to protest on Sunday, and in other cities across Greece reflected a growing dread — certainly among Greeks, but also among economists and perhaps even European officials — that the sharp belt-tightening and the bailout money it brings will still not be enough to keep the country from going over a precipice.

It's actually going to make things worse, because it will cause the economy to contract, and the last thing you want to do in order to get out of debt is to cut your salary.