3/9/2015 Article originally published in September 2015 on Zero Magazine In 2008 when Wall Street imploded, causing a crisis that was meant to last for more than seven years, Greece became the epicentre of Europe’s debt crisis. Yet it was only in 2009 that Europe - and later the rest of the world - started to pay close attention to the aridity of the Greek economy that for years had been understating its deficit figures. The moment European leaders realised the gravitas of the situation, Greece was imposed not to borrow in the financial market anymore. The country was soon veering towards a bankruptcy that could cause a new and probably bigger financial crisis that would have dragged and probably given the final blow to the Eurozone. To avoid such events, the so-called troika, that is to say the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission, issued two international bailouts for Greece for a total of more than €240billion. However, the bailouts came with harsh conditions, among which a harsh austerity that was aimed at deeply cutting budgets and consistently increasing taxes. Although the bailouts were supposed to turn the Greek crisis into a stable financial situation and alleviate the market fears of a Eurozone crack down, in five years the Greek economy shrunk by a quarter and unemployment went up to 25%.
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