Greeks reacted with an air of vindication and outrage at the International Monetary Fund's admission it erred in its handling of the country's bailout, berating an apology that comes too late to salvage an economy and countless lives in ruins. Anger was palpable on the streets of Athens, where the EU-IMF austerity recipe that the Washington-based fund says it sharply misjudged has left rows of shuttered stores and many scrounging for scraps of food in trash cans.
"Really? Thanks for letting us know but we can't forgive you," said Apostolos Trikalinos, a 59-year old garbage collector and a father of two. "Let's not fool ourselves. They'll never give us anything back. I'm sorry for all the people who killed themselves because of austerity. How are we going to bring them back? How?"
The IMF acknowledged on Wednesday that it underestimated the damage done to Greece's economy from spending cuts and tax hikes imposed in a bailout, which was accompanied by one of the worst economic collapses ever experienced by a country in peacetime. A report looking back on the bailout said the Fund veered from its own standards to overestimate how much debt Greece could bear, and should have pushed harder and sooner for private lenders to take a "haircut" to reduce Greece's debt burden. Prime Minister Antonis Samaras told reporters the acknowledgement justified his positions. He had criticised from the outset "what the IMF has called mistakes".
"And we have been correcting those mistakes over the past year," Samaras told reporters during a visit to Helsinki. Greeks have seen their incomes plunge by about a third since the debt crisis erupted in 2009 and prompted Greece to seek two bailouts from the EU and the IMF. The unemployment rate has hit nearly 27 percent and suicide rates have soared. Worst hit have been the youth, nearly 60 percent of whom are unemployed.
"The IMF admits to the crime," the leftist Avgi newspaper declared on its front page. Top selling newspaper Ta Nea branded it an "admission of failure". In the corridors of power, some officials suggested the admission could strengthen their hand in future talks with the IMF, European Union and European Central Bank, collectively known as the troika, on debt relief or new austerity measures.
"It is positive that the report recognises that there were mistakes in Greece's programme in the past and we hope that they will not be repeated in the future and then create the need for corrective action," a senior government official told Reuters. For many Greek politicians who complained for years that they were forced to sign off on the bailouts under the threat of a chaotic default and euro zone exit, it was also a moment of vindication.
"The IMF report confirms and records the positions that we have repeatedly presented in public, which formed the basis of our arguments during tough negotiations with the IMF and the other two parties of the troika," former Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos told Reuters.
Venizelos, who now leads the Socialist PASOK party in the ruling coalition, negotiated Greece's second bailout in 2012 after reluctantly backing the first bailout. His predecessor, George Papaconstantinou, who negotiated the first bailout in 2010, declined to comment.