So what is the Greek crisis really about? For starters, it’s a solvency crisis, meaning that bailouts can at best postpone, but not avert, the day of reckoning. Greece’s debt-to-GDP ratio still tops 150%, and despite touting its efforts at austerity, government expenditures are up 3.6% year-on-year, to \u00e2\u201a\u00ac21 billion. Its revenues for the first four months of 2011 were down 9.1% from the previous year.<\/p>\n
Greece also suffers from a productivity crisis. The country’s employment rate is under 60%, compared to a eurozone average of 64.2%. In 2009 Greeks produced $34.2 worth of goods and services per hour worked, according to OECD data\u201d\u201dcompared to $53.1 in Germany and $56.8 in the United States.<\/p>\n
The productivity crisis is linked, in turn, to the huge proportion of Greeks employed by the state\u201d\u201dfully a third of the workforce, by some estimates, and civil servants are unionized, often militant and politically influential.<\/p>\n