So, if they can't afford austerity what makes you think they will repay debts in the future?

"Pensioners" yes, usually from an inflated public sector. Untouchables. Who pays the price? The youth

What about passing needed reforms? LOL, of course not, that will hurt the inflated public sector and their pensioners, never mind no one wants to invest there anymore.

And the worse thing is, if you turn the tap on, you'll probably get the lovely results of "Abenomics", that is, people investing in BS like (existing or low demand) real estate or on non efficiency improving activities (like buying old computer parts for old systems)

Before the "evil" ECB that lends with few guarantees those countries were paying the real cost of their debts (incl. currency devaluation) But then it was "Evil Germany" that could borrow with low interest rates while they had to pay high rates.

Did the cleaners at the finance ministry deserve to be fired because of arbitrary austerity? Does a grandmother in Athens who worked and paid into a pension all her life deserve a cut in her pension from €1300 to €600 a month? Does the widow of ansailor deserve cuts from €1900 to €650 a month because of a financial crisis far away?

These are real and serious questions.

The worst part of this policy of austerity is that the only thing it is useful for is imposing subjugation on the politicians of Greece, it makes Greece unable to pay for its obligations and unable to recover from them. I agree Greece needs reform, needs to collect more tax, needs more jobs and industry, but pro-cyclical austerity is not the answer for anyone including the debtors of Greece.

This shouldn't be about winners and losers, and fairy tales about evil Germany or corrupt, feckless Greece - it should be about getting Greece back on its feet so it can contribute. The same way the EU helped Spain after Franco or Ireland after the troubles.

Destitution was not "imposed" to them. While I agree there are issues with the Euro zone/lack of a fiscal union, the end problem is lack of money going in. That shows up as austerity in this case BUT would have shown up as devaluations/debt/inflation in other cases. Coming from a 3rd world country I can say I have experience in this unfortunately (then the "evil guys" are the IMF, etc).

> Did the cleaners at the finance ministry deserve to be fired because of arbitrary austerity? Does a grandmother in Athens who worked and paid into a pension all her life deserve a cut in her pension from €1300 to €600 a month? Does the widow of ansailor deserve cuts from €1900 to €650 a month because of a financial crisis far away?

It's not "fair", and some of those issues are just a fundamental lack of jobs/work (same thing happens anywhere) but the issue is not with them. However it's easier to cut salaries/earnings of those people in your example while keeping the privileges of the higher levels. (See for example faculty/administration wage gap in American universities)

> it should be about getting Greece back on its feet so it can contribute. The same way the EU helped Spain after Franco or Ireland after the troubles.

Agreed, and austerity is not good in itself, it's more like making a fat person starve (which sucks and everybody hates) instead of making them eat better and exercise more (but if they don't do it themselves, then what).

I'd contend it absolutely was, this is why I gave examples of measures imposed by the troika like firing cleaners.

Austerity is the wrong solution at the wrong time and is especially galling given the central bank's largesse to other sectors/countries at the same time.

They should have imposed a large haircut on creditors and given long term loans to Greece, instead they imposed drastic budget cuts (aka destitution for the people of Greece) and sold it as justice. It was unfair, cruel, and fundamentally wrong.

What was the other choice? ECB printing money and lending it to Greece fully knowing it will be never paid back?

But once you default, you have to balance your budget, because nobody will lend to you, and until 2017 Greece were running a deficit. Default would cause even more pain than so much hated austerity.