Greece's Economy Continues to Outperform Expectations – Expectations Being that Austerity Policy Would Produce a Disaster

 Actual Results Are an Even Greater Disaster

Yes the story from Greece is getting boring, provided of course you are not actually in Greece.  Month after month the news tells of an economy getting worse and worse, and this month is no exception.

Greece's unemployment rate rose to a record 23.1% in May, complicating Athens's efforts to carry out deep cuts demanded by its creditors that may involve laying off thousands of public employees.

The youngest workers were hardest hit, with more than one in two Greeks, or 54.9%, between 15 and 24 years old looking for work, national statistics agency Elstat said. The jobless rate climbed from 22.6% overall and 51.5% for youths in April. A year earlier, the national average stood at 16.8% overall and 41.7% for 15- to 24-year-olds.

Elstat said the number of Greeks without jobs stood at 1.15 million, compared with 3.82 million who were working. Since May 2011, the number of people working has fallen by 320,540.

And month after month, drearily the policy does not change.  European rulers seem determined to impose their totally wrong policy on the Greek people, irrespective of the outcome even though they know they need to change the policy.

A spokesman for the European Commission said the new Greek unemployment figures were a source of "deep concern," but insisted that the country's bailout program includes measures designed to boost growth and jobs.

"It's something both the troika and the Greek authorities need to address," Olivier Bailly told reporters.

Mr. Bailly declined to comment on whether the troika—comprising of the commission, the IMF and the European Central Bank—would calibrate targets for Greece's program in view of the deteriorating unemployment figures.

So what’s next for Greece?  Well there is this policy move coming in the future.

Under the latest bailout program, Greece has committed to shedding some 15,000 public workers by the end of this year—part of a more ambitious plan to reduce the state workforce by 150,000 by 2015.

Yes, everyone is reading that correctly.  Greece will battle its unemployment problem by making more people unemployed.  In fact, it may be that Greece and the European Gang of Idiots will adopt the same logic that says terminating people from their jobs makes unemployment lower to other aspect of the economy.  For example, here’s what we might expect in the near term.

NEWS FROM 2013 IN EUROPE

“Greek and European leaders today decided that having less education made students more educated, and that they would be cutting the number of school years to graduate from 12 to 9.”

“Greek and European leaders today decided that having less highways improved the surface transformation system, and that they would be tearing up several major highways that crossed the country in order to increase efficiency in the transportation sector.

Greek and European leaders today decided that because police were often found at crime scenes, they would cut the number of police officers in Greece in order to reduce crime.

Greek and European leaders today decided that since tax collections were not very effective and that a lot of Greeks were avoiding taxes they owed that they would decrease the number of government employees charged with enforcing tax laws and tax collections.

Greek and European leaders today decided that since tourism was key to the Greek economic recovery they would shut down the major tourist attractions during the peak summer months to reduce the crowding at those venues.

Well, you get the picture, and yes some of the above could really happen given the mentality of Greek and European leadership.