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Austerity, Depression, Crime Weigh Down Greeks

While Greece’s fight for survival is taking place in political and economic circles far from the streets, the country’s working class, the elderly and poor are paying a deep price for the pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions that leaders say are necessary.
Suicides are soaring, along with depression and crime. More than 68,000 businesses have closed and many people, apart from the rich and politicians and tax evaders who have largely escaped sacrifice, face a bleak Christmas.
Empty store fronts, even in the heart of the major shopping area of Athens, Thessaloniki and other cities, have become covered with grime as hope fades fast with winter approaching.
The unemployment rate has hit a record 26 percent and the government is set to impose a $17.45 billion spending cut and tax hike plan that will bury more Greeks under the avalanche of austerity that has pushed two million people into poverty.
The news agency Bloomberg, in a grim depiction of life for many in Greece in the era of austerity demanded by international lenders, outlined the fate some are facing. Anastasia Karagaitanaki, 57, is a former model and cafe owner in Thessaloniki, Greece.
After losing her business to the financial crisis, she now sleeps on a daybed next to the refrigerator in her mother’s kitchen and depends on charity for food and insulin for her diabetes. “I feel like my life has slipped through my hands,” said Karagaitanaki, whose brother also shares the one-bedroom apartment. “I feel like I’m dead.”
For thousands of Greeks like Karagaitanaki, the fabric of middle-class life is unraveling. Teachers, salaries slashed by a third, are stealing electricity. Families in once-stable neighborhoods are afraid to leave their homes because of rising street crime.
Karagaitanaki’s family can’t afford gas to heat their home this winter and will rely on electric blankets in the chilly northern Greek city. They live on the 785 euros ($1,027) a month their mother collects monthly from their late father’s pension. Two years ago, Karagaitanaki sold her jewelry for 3,000 euros, which she gave to her two sons.
Her blood sugar is rising because she can’t afford the meat and vegetables her doctor recommends and instead eats rice and beans she gets from the Greek Orthodox Church. “We are waiting every month for my mother’s pension,” Karagaitanaki said. “If my mother dies, what can I do? Everyone here is dependent on their parents’ pensions.”
George Tzogopoulos, a research fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European & Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) in Athens, told Bloomberg that, “I don’t think there is a single Greek citizen who believes that things will be better. There is no money for people to spend.”
Outside a soup kitchen run by the Evangelical Church of Thessaloniki, men and women squabble over their place in line. Attendance at the kitchen’s twice-weekly dinners has climbed from 25 to about 140 in five years, said Antonis Sakellariou, a church elder.
In the once stable neighborhood of Kordelio, the unemployed and drug users gather in the parks, scaring away mothers and children, and crimes like chain snatching are on the rise. Many long-time residents have left, moving abroad or to their families’ villages, leaving behind empty houses, said Evangelia Rombou, 58, who has lived in Kordelio for 22 years. “We feel like foreigners here,” Rombou said.
Greece’s economy has contracted every quarter for four years and one in four Greeks is jobless. Austerity measures have cut public employee salaries and benefits, reduced government services and raised taxes. The new round of cuts means Greece will become the 17-nation Eurozone’s poorest country in two years, according to the European Commission.
Manos Matsaganis, an assistant professor at the Athens University of Economics and Business, told Bloomberg that Greece’s effective poverty rate has risen to 36 percent from about 20 percent in 2009 and that about 8.5 percent of Greeks now live in extreme poverty and can’t afford a basic basket of goods and services.
The crisis is shredding the middle class, which is feeling the brunt of public-sector salary reductions and private job losses while paying higher taxes, said Elias Papaioannou, an associate professor of economics at London Business School.  “People are suffering massively,” he said. “To me, it’s the collapse of the state.”

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