Yesterday, Koumoundouros Voice posted a news item, so crucial on getting us out of our present sad predicament that it was probably lost, as one more piece of news. The item from Die Welt is shockingly simple: Greek international shipping continues being the first marine power in the world for 42 consecutive years. Today the 4.500 ships owned by Greeks represent a total investment of 95 billion euros, 10 billion more than the assistance Greece received under the Fourth Assistance Programme, signed by Mr. Tsipras, last year.
The prestigious German newspaper goes on to report that in accordance with the London “Vessels Value” since May, Greek shipowners have placed 404 new orders, worth some 21 billion dollars. In Greece we celebrate for investments of few million not billion dollars.
In plain Greek: When Greeks work far from the corruption and “regulation” of their own State they do wonders.
What is the secret tip? They simply operate in a regime of free competitive economy, strictly regulated by international rules of safety, financial adequacy and law away from the perversion and corruption of the last surviving Soviet economy. This is the dark ideo-fixation that Greek politicians, in friendly collusion with trade-unionists as well as entrepreneurs, use to keep the Greek economy under the control of the sui generis mafia that governs Greece.
Do you wish for concrete evidence? Many people starve in today’s Greece, where gdp, investment, employment hit read for 7 years: a sad negative “first”. And yet, food prices remain higher in Greece than in Germany or France. The reason? They are fixed by few cartels and not by the inexistent competition. The gap between producer and consumer prices is again the largest in Europe for exactly the same reason. And yet, we wonder why we import Turkish or Argentinian lemons.
Mr. Tsipras, as well as his predecessors (as Mr. Almounia recently reminded us) would have done well if they had dropped their exotic trips to Maduro’s Venezuela, or their dogmas of “mild adjustment” and had instead invited Greek shipowners to teach them, how you come out first in world competition and how to achieve multi-billion investments. Constantine Karamanlis, did it some 60 years ago and within few years Greek shipowners had built two oil refineries, two shipyards, many industries and OLYMPIC AIRWAYS in Greece. Our current politicians would have learned first hand how fast and huge growth is engineered.
Unfortunately, it appears that our political personnel prefer a State under their tight clientellistic control, to a State of free competition, which would gain the respect of Europe and the entire world. If our multifarious “leaderships” do not clear their minds and we continue accepting them, we will remain the sad gravediggers of Greek noble competition, “proud” that we have remained the last, hungry dinosaur of Sovietism.
By Maximos 20 Ιουνίου 2016