The dramatic contrast between Icelandic and Greek responses to financial tragedy explained in this chapter really struck me. Stuckler and Basu did a good job making the public health consequences quite clear–how people’s health in Iceland was pretty stable through the recession, but people’s health in Greece got way worse and continues to be a problem. Because it’s not their point and because evidence is probably less clear-cut, though, they didn’t go into a particularly deep discussion of the effects of financial/public health crises on the social fabric of a nation. From the chapters, it seems like things are pretty solid in Iceland, while Greece’s sense of community is pretty tattered–a predictable response of people feeling continually unsupported and at-risk.
My experiences at Bluestockings support the conclusions about Greece. We’ve had a number of Greek activists and immigrants come to the store to run events on the financial crisis and resulting social crisis going on there, and from what they say, things are real bad. They, as well as many activists here, are very concerned about Golden Dawn (the neo-Nazi party referenced on the last page of the chapter) and the alarming support for it.
This last part is not specific to Greece or Iceland and I’m not really sure how to connect it, but the IMF is distressingly silly. You’d think they’d try to have some more solid reasoning to back up their recommendations–whenever they get involved in a country, the stakes are very, very high. The part about financial multipliers, and how the IMF just guessed that they average about .5 rather than that they vary significantly, struck me as particularly irresponsible. IMF, you know the saying–to assume makes an ass out of u and me.
