Бойтесь греков, бонды приносящих
Sep. 15th, 2010 10:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexbogdСпасибо ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
atticus_flinch за ссылку на новый текст Майкла Льюиса в Vanity Fair. Льюис - финансовый журналист и автор книг, недавно прогремел его репортаж об Исландии, и вот теперь он направился в Грецию. Текст читать обязательно надо, хотя он на 67 тысяч знаков.
В некоторых местах репортажа я просто падал под стол. Все очень знакомо и точно, хотя Льюис пробыл тут какие-то недели. Уморительное интервью с министром финансов ("ну, вы же понимаете, перед выборами никто налоги не собирает"), с афинскими сборщиками налогов, бизнесменами и прочее. История, как он ездил в Ватопедский монастырь и как его там вычислили монахи, замешанные в падении предыдущего правительства Греции, заслуживает просто Пулитцеровской премии, я рыдал. Кстати, там много точных наблюдений о взаимоотношении греков и церкви: церковь винят в том, в чем сами повинны, хотя она не лучше и не хуже всех остальных (разве что талантливее обделывает имущественные дела). Не знаю, приукрашивал ли Льюис, но вообще греческая действительность такова, что и приукрашивать не надо.
Беспощадная картинка с демонстраций: учителя, которые не учат, врачи-воры, госслужащие, почти на работе не появляющиеся. Молодцы с дубинами и притороченными к поясу противогазами. Для Льюиса кульминация всего безобразия последних месяцев - в убийстве банковских служащих во время демонстрации в мае, я совершенно с ним согласен. Он очень жестко описывает греческое общество как множество людей, занятых только собственной выгодой и абсолютно не озабоченных общим благом.
Я не знаю, правда ли это. Я бы не написал так жестко, а пытался бы уравновесить чем-то добрым. В конечном счете, все относительно. Но вот как греки воспримут эту критику, двух мнений быть не может. Льюиса объявят клеветником (кое-то в блогах уже объявил). 90% скажет: ни я лично, ни греки вообще ни в чем не виноваты, виноваты другие. Кто эти другие, не очень ясно: обрушившаяся система-то была выгодна так или иначе всем. В подтверждение своей мысли приведу интересную карикатуру из "Этноса", которая показывает, до какой степени общество уверено в том, что оно не при чем.
Надпись на крематории: "Мы все виноваты". Правительственные чиновники мешают из людей варево, на котором написано: [отмена] 13-14-й пенсии. Гитлер говорит: "Я признаю свою историческую ошибку, господа министры... Лучшее мыло получается из пенсионеров".
Отдельно хочу возразить некоторым ЖЖистам, которые заявляли, будто это все очень похоже на Россию. Нет, непохоже. Одной всепроникающей коррупции недостаточно. У нас есть нефть и нет долгов. Даже если мы бегом будем бежать, раньше чем через 15-20 лет в таком положении, как греки, не окажемся.
Под катом несколько отрывков из Льюиса, которые меня буквально поразили. Для памяти.
As he finishes his story the finance minister stresses that this isn’t a simple matter of the government lying about its expenditures. “This wasn’t all due to misreporting,” he says. “In 2009, tax collection disintegrated, because it was an election year.”
“What?”
He smiles.
“The first thing a government does in an election year is to pull the tax collectors off the streets.”
“You’re kidding.”
Now he’s laughing at me. I’m clearly naïve.
In Athens, I several times had a feeling new to me as a journalist: a complete lack of interest in what was obviously shocking material. I’d sit down with someone who knew the inner workings of the Greek government: a big-time banker, a tax collector, a deputy finance minister, a former M.P. I’d take out my notepad and start writing down the stories that spilled out of them. Scandal after scandal poured forth. Twenty minutes into it I’d lose interest. There were simply too many: they could fill libraries, never mind a magazine article.
Twenty years ago a successful businessman turned minister of finance named Stefanos Manos pointed out that it would be cheaper to put all Greece’s rail passengers into taxicabs: it’s still true. “We have a railroad company which is bankrupt beyond comprehension,” Manos put it to me. “And yet there isn’t a single private company in Greece with that kind of average pay.”
In 2001, Greece entered the European Monetary Union, swapped the drachma for the euro, and acquired for its debt an implicit European (read German) guarantee. Greeks could now borrow long-term funds at roughly the same rate as Germans—not 18 percent but 5 percent. To remain in the euro zone, they were meant, in theory, to maintain budget deficits below 3 percent of G.D.P.; in practice, all they had to do was cook the books to show that they were hitting the targets.
I am told 50 times if I am told once that what Greeks care about is “justice” and what really boils the Greek blood is the feeling of unfairness. Obviously this distinguishes them from no human being on the planet, and ignores what’s interesting: exactly what a Greek finds unfair. It’s clearly not the corruption of their political system. It’s not cheating on their taxes, or taking small bribes in their service to the state. No: what bothers them is when some outside party—someone clearly different from themselves, with motives apart from narrow and easily understood self-interest—comes in and exploits the corruption of their system.
In a society that has endured something like total moral collapse, its monks had somehow become the single universally acceptable target of moral outrage... But I also wondered how a bunch of odd-looking guys who had walked away from the material world had such a knack for getting their way in it: how on earth do monks, of all people, wind up as Greece’s best shot at a Harvard Business School case study?
"People have gotten tired of material pleasures. Of material things. And they realize they cannot really find success in these things.” And with that he [monk Arsenios] picks up the phone and orders drinks and dessert.
I polled a random sample of several rich Greeks who had made their fortune in real estate or finance. They put the monk’s real-estate and financial assets at less than $2 billion but more than $1 billion—up from zero since the new management took over. And the business had started with nothing to sell but forgiveness.
The general idea [of the Greek government] seems to be that while the Greek people will never listen to any internal call for sacrifice they might listen to calls from outside. That is, they no longer really even want to govern themselves.
Thousands upon thousands of government employees take to the streets to protest the bill. Here is Greece’s version of the Tea Party: tax collectors on the take, public-school teachers who don’t really teach, well-paid employees of bankrupt state railroads whose trains never run on time, state hospital workers bribed to buy overpriced supplies. Here they are, and here we are: a nation of people looking for anyone to blame but themselves.
That they burned a bank is, under the circumstances, incredible. If there were any justice in the world the Greek bankers would be in the streets marching to protest the morals of the ordinary Greek citizen. The Marfin Bank’s marble stoop has been turned into a sad shrine: a stack of stuffed animals for the unborn child, a few pictures of monks, a sign with a quote from the ancient orator Isocrates: “Democracy destroys itself because it abuses its right to freedom and equality. Because it teaches its citizens to consider audacity as a right, lawlessness as a freedom, abrasive speech as equality, and anarchy as progress.”
Even if it is technically possible for these people to repay their debts, live within their means, and return to good standing inside the European Union, do they have the inner resources to do it? Or have they so lost their ability to feel connected to anything outside their small worlds that they would rather just shed themselves of the obligations?
atticus_flinch за ссылку на новый текст Майкла Льюиса в Vanity Fair. Льюис - финансовый журналист и автор книг, недавно прогремел его репортаж об Исландии, и вот теперь он направился в Грецию. Текст читать обязательно надо, хотя он на 67 тысяч знаков.В некоторых местах репортажа я просто падал под стол. Все очень знакомо и точно, хотя Льюис пробыл тут какие-то недели. Уморительное интервью с министром финансов ("ну, вы же понимаете, перед выборами никто налоги не собирает"), с афинскими сборщиками налогов, бизнесменами и прочее. История, как он ездил в Ватопедский монастырь и как его там вычислили монахи, замешанные в падении предыдущего правительства Греции, заслуживает просто Пулитцеровской премии, я рыдал. Кстати, там много точных наблюдений о взаимоотношении греков и церкви: церковь винят в том, в чем сами повинны, хотя она не лучше и не хуже всех остальных (разве что талантливее обделывает имущественные дела). Не знаю, приукрашивал ли Льюис, но вообще греческая действительность такова, что и приукрашивать не надо.
Беспощадная картинка с демонстраций: учителя, которые не учат, врачи-воры, госслужащие, почти на работе не появляющиеся. Молодцы с дубинами и притороченными к поясу противогазами. Для Льюиса кульминация всего безобразия последних месяцев - в убийстве банковских служащих во время демонстрации в мае, я совершенно с ним согласен. Он очень жестко описывает греческое общество как множество людей, занятых только собственной выгодой и абсолютно не озабоченных общим благом.
Я не знаю, правда ли это. Я бы не написал так жестко, а пытался бы уравновесить чем-то добрым. В конечном счете, все относительно. Но вот как греки воспримут эту критику, двух мнений быть не может. Льюиса объявят клеветником (кое-то в блогах уже объявил). 90% скажет: ни я лично, ни греки вообще ни в чем не виноваты, виноваты другие. Кто эти другие, не очень ясно: обрушившаяся система-то была выгодна так или иначе всем. В подтверждение своей мысли приведу интересную карикатуру из "Этноса", которая показывает, до какой степени общество уверено в том, что оно не при чем.
Надпись на крематории: "Мы все виноваты". Правительственные чиновники мешают из людей варево, на котором написано: [отмена] 13-14-й пенсии. Гитлер говорит: "Я признаю свою историческую ошибку, господа министры... Лучшее мыло получается из пенсионеров".
Отдельно хочу возразить некоторым ЖЖистам, которые заявляли, будто это все очень похоже на Россию. Нет, непохоже. Одной всепроникающей коррупции недостаточно. У нас есть нефть и нет долгов. Даже если мы бегом будем бежать, раньше чем через 15-20 лет в таком положении, как греки, не окажемся.
Под катом несколько отрывков из Льюиса, которые меня буквально поразили. Для памяти.
As he finishes his story the finance minister stresses that this isn’t a simple matter of the government lying about its expenditures. “This wasn’t all due to misreporting,” he says. “In 2009, tax collection disintegrated, because it was an election year.”
“What?”
He smiles.
“The first thing a government does in an election year is to pull the tax collectors off the streets.”
“You’re kidding.”
Now he’s laughing at me. I’m clearly naïve.
In Athens, I several times had a feeling new to me as a journalist: a complete lack of interest in what was obviously shocking material. I’d sit down with someone who knew the inner workings of the Greek government: a big-time banker, a tax collector, a deputy finance minister, a former M.P. I’d take out my notepad and start writing down the stories that spilled out of them. Scandal after scandal poured forth. Twenty minutes into it I’d lose interest. There were simply too many: they could fill libraries, never mind a magazine article.
Twenty years ago a successful businessman turned minister of finance named Stefanos Manos pointed out that it would be cheaper to put all Greece’s rail passengers into taxicabs: it’s still true. “We have a railroad company which is bankrupt beyond comprehension,” Manos put it to me. “And yet there isn’t a single private company in Greece with that kind of average pay.”
In 2001, Greece entered the European Monetary Union, swapped the drachma for the euro, and acquired for its debt an implicit European (read German) guarantee. Greeks could now borrow long-term funds at roughly the same rate as Germans—not 18 percent but 5 percent. To remain in the euro zone, they were meant, in theory, to maintain budget deficits below 3 percent of G.D.P.; in practice, all they had to do was cook the books to show that they were hitting the targets.
I am told 50 times if I am told once that what Greeks care about is “justice” and what really boils the Greek blood is the feeling of unfairness. Obviously this distinguishes them from no human being on the planet, and ignores what’s interesting: exactly what a Greek finds unfair. It’s clearly not the corruption of their political system. It’s not cheating on their taxes, or taking small bribes in their service to the state. No: what bothers them is when some outside party—someone clearly different from themselves, with motives apart from narrow and easily understood self-interest—comes in and exploits the corruption of their system.
In a society that has endured something like total moral collapse, its monks had somehow become the single universally acceptable target of moral outrage... But I also wondered how a bunch of odd-looking guys who had walked away from the material world had such a knack for getting their way in it: how on earth do monks, of all people, wind up as Greece’s best shot at a Harvard Business School case study?
"People have gotten tired of material pleasures. Of material things. And they realize they cannot really find success in these things.” And with that he [monk Arsenios] picks up the phone and orders drinks and dessert.
I polled a random sample of several rich Greeks who had made their fortune in real estate or finance. They put the monk’s real-estate and financial assets at less than $2 billion but more than $1 billion—up from zero since the new management took over. And the business had started with nothing to sell but forgiveness.
The general idea [of the Greek government] seems to be that while the Greek people will never listen to any internal call for sacrifice they might listen to calls from outside. That is, they no longer really even want to govern themselves.
Thousands upon thousands of government employees take to the streets to protest the bill. Here is Greece’s version of the Tea Party: tax collectors on the take, public-school teachers who don’t really teach, well-paid employees of bankrupt state railroads whose trains never run on time, state hospital workers bribed to buy overpriced supplies. Here they are, and here we are: a nation of people looking for anyone to blame but themselves.
That they burned a bank is, under the circumstances, incredible. If there were any justice in the world the Greek bankers would be in the streets marching to protest the morals of the ordinary Greek citizen. The Marfin Bank’s marble stoop has been turned into a sad shrine: a stack of stuffed animals for the unborn child, a few pictures of monks, a sign with a quote from the ancient orator Isocrates: “Democracy destroys itself because it abuses its right to freedom and equality. Because it teaches its citizens to consider audacity as a right, lawlessness as a freedom, abrasive speech as equality, and anarchy as progress.”
Even if it is technically possible for these people to repay their debts, live within their means, and return to good standing inside the European Union, do they have the inner resources to do it? Or have they so lost their ability to feel connected to anything outside their small worlds that they would rather just shed themselves of the obligations?
