Professor Ngaire Woods on the second bailout deal of the Greek debt crisis

Ngaire Woods commented on BBC Radio 5 On the Money show (5 February) on the demands made on Greece in return for the second bailout for its economy.

Ngaire said what the Greek government has been asked to do is quite extreme. She noted that the Greek government is expected to deliver on a 25% cut in the minimum wage among other things on top of what it has already cut.

Since Greece has already lost one government over the handling of the crisis, Ngaire said that my concern is that these measures at this speed are going to break Greece both politically and economically.

The full programme can be heard here (at c. 39 min on the iPlayer clock).

Ngaire also discussed the Greek crisis and the Eurozone in the Business Daily programme of BBC World Service (16 February, 2012). She compared the conditions for the second Greek bail out to other IMF conditionality arrangements.

Ngaire said why it is nevertheless surprising is that the IMF then went through a period of real learning and decided after the East Asian crisis that it would stop doing such intrusive conditionality in part because it simply does not work and in part because they returned to their core mission which was macroeconomic stability.

She discusses the reasons for ths reversal of course by the IMF, the factor of time in reform implementation, and the political costs of the reform package. She continued The tricky balance is this: is that you want to be offering support to those in Greece who really want to reform and want to be doing the right thing. You want to be strengthening their hand domestically but not make it look like they are simply your puppets. And it is that fine balance that I think the European ministers have got wrong.

The full programme can be heard here (0.06.29 on iPlayer clock).

As the Eurozone ministers finally agreed on a bailout package, Ngaire discussed the terms of the deal on the Today programme at BBC Radio 4 (21 February). She said that Greece is unlikely to meet its targets in what she termed a political game.