If I were a Greek and a businessman, it would be clear to me. My business would have a very dark future in the Eurozone with a wildly recessionary economy. With rising taxes aiming at desperate tax collection and consumption collapsing, my sales and chances of survival would be nil. And if my business had the capacity to export, I would also not be able to support it with a euro as expensive as the current one, as my competitiveness would be and will be at rock bottom in a foreign exchange environment that only German productivity will withstand.
If instead of being an employer I were an employee, my personal outlook would not be much better, as my future and the well-being of my family would absolutely depend on a salary that would be linked to the future survival of the company I work for. Therefore, as an employee, my future would have the same dark clouds as the company that pays my salary, if it could still do so in the short or medium term, in a scenario such as the one proposed for Greece within the Eurozone.
If I were neither an employer nor an employee, but a Greek public employee, things would change substantially, at least from my civil servant's point of view. However, the expeditious cuts that keeping the country in the Eurozone would require would not bode well for the «security» of my job, let alone the maintenance of my economic working conditions. However, being a civil servant, I would be particularly dizzy about such a radical change in the economy and the country's institutions as the exit from the Euro.
Despite these initial analyses, we should not forget that leaving the Eurozone and printing unlimitedly as many drachmas (or new drachmas) as necessary also has its uncertainties, and many of them. To begin with, European Commission spokesperson Karolina Kottova has already stated that «the Treaty does not provide for an exit from the eurozone without an exit from the European Union (EU); that is the current situation». And from there to retaliatory trade measures to prevent the Greek economy from making a killing with its newly devalued drachma is only a step away. In fact, the EU would only have to follow in the footsteps of the quotas that have been imposed on rogue exporters such as China in various countries. Greece could therefore see the EU as a bloc, and its ability to influence other countries to follow suit, boycotting Greek products in retaliation for a treacherous debt default that would also have generated a financial chaos that only Germany could control by writing ECB cheques.
But since all these considerations are far removed from the concerns of the Greek population at large, it would have been more than difficult to convince the voters in the cancelled referendum to want to remain in the single currency. For that is the path of extreme sacrifice and the road to a long and agonising depression of their businesses and the quality of life of their population in general.
A very dark and uncertain future awaits Greece, inside and outside the Eurozone respectively. But for most working and entrepreneurial families, the uncertainty of a return to the Drachma is perhaps more palatable than the certainty of long economic hardship. And as long as Germany continues to prevent the euro-producing machine from printing at full tilt, the euro will continue to play the role of the nerd against which all other troubled currencies try to devalue in order to become more competitive. And with a single currency at current exchange rates, only economies such as Germany and other minor northern European economies will be able to survive. For make no mistake, the essence of the problems facing Greece is the same as those facing the rest of the periphery, albeit in less advanced stages of decay.
The outlook for the PIIGS is therefore very negative in any of the scenarios that may arise in the near future and that Greece already has on the table today. And if I were Greek...? What I am sure of is that I would be deeply ashamed of the behaviour of my government and parliament. But the world is watching with bated breath (when it should be stunned and outraged) as the risk of financial collapse of the entire EU and other developed countries is used as a weapon in the power struggle in Greece. In this unfortunate process in which miseries are laid bare, too many things are breaking apart from the abysmal growing economic divergence. And the will of an EU that was meant to move towards a common Europeanist sentiment may have to heal wounds that are too deep. Because economic barriers and the moral turpitude of various leaders are joining forces to centrifuge an Old Continent that seems condemned to revive conflicts that we thought were already part of history.