Koraki

People who like to deal in political aphorisms will tell you that the first weeks a government spends in power are its most important. Though – like most such ideas – this has its roots in the US, where campaigning eats roughly three-quarters of any presidential cycle, it is true that even in Europe, the early days are when a new administration seeks to set the markers from which it will build. In the case of the first two weeks since Nea Dimokratia regained power, the party

Greece has had the highest increase in tax revenue of any of the 35 OECD countries in the last 12 months. Its revenue grew from 36.4 per cent to 38.6 per cent of GDP. The average across the 35 (which of course includes Greece) was just 0.3 per cent. Although much of Greece's media describes this as a ‘tax hike’, the OECD statistical model does take into account not only the amount of tax charged, but also the amount successfully collected, and so the picture need not be as ne

Despite increased discussion regarding a Greek economic ‘recovery’, it will take an extremely long time before the state bounces back from a period in which average household income has dropped by 27 per cent, unemployment is at 22 per cent, and one in three Greek businesses have gone bankrupt. Ominously for the current Greek government, Syriza is largely blamed for this, which is simultaneously unreasonable, because Syriza did not cause the crisis, or come up with the enforc