An internal International Monetary Fund assessment paints a dour picture of Greece's path to economic recovery, with years of high unemployment rates, slow growth and political bickering threatening to undermine a recently approved international rescue program.
In crafting a $140 billion three-year bailout for the indebted country, IMF and European officials praised the Greek government for the budget cuts and tax increases it has enacted, and for its plans to further overhaul one of the continent's least competitive economies.
But a detailed staff assessment, released after the IMF board approved the rescue program, describes both the depth of the social shock in store for the nation and the substantial risks that could push Greece back to insolvency.
There are global implications: The rescue program for Greece was approved to stop a "contagion" from undermining confidence in other highly indebted European countries, eroding the value of the euro and weakening banks, and possibly throwing the world economic recovery off course with a new financial shock.
Plan at risk
The risk that the joint IMF-European Union rescue plan will come unwound is "undeniably high," said the IMF staff report, which detailed how variations in the fund's assumptions about growth, inflation, interest rates, restructuring and other variables could leave Greece's debt load climbing despite the efforts being made to bring it down.
Indeed, the report suggested, the effort to aid Greece was justified as much by the "systemic concerns" posed for the world economy by a Greek default as by the likelihood that the program will succeed.
The level of concern that Greece's problems might spill over to other countries became clear last weekend when European finance ministers and the IMF approved a separate near trillion-dollar effort to support other indebted European nations if they run into trouble.
The program was considered an emergency measure, and markets around the world rose Monday, although the euro fell Tuesday as U.S. markets remained flat. But its success is far from guaranteed, requiring some of the same difficult political choices in other parts of Europe that Greek society is trying to navigate.
The IMF staff report described in unvarnished terms the pressures that are likely to mount.
After years of growth fueled by low-interest borrowing available after Greece adopted the euro, the country must now go through years of "internal devaluation" -- falling wages, rising unemployment rates and stunted growth. As a member of the 16-nation European Monetary Union, the country does not have its own currency. But using local economic conditions, the IMF staff estimated that the country's "effective exchange rate" was overvalued by as much as 30 percent -- an excess that will have to be squeezed out of the economy in a "long and painful process."
The first round of adjustment is already underway in the form of government spending cuts and tax increases equivalent to more than 8 percent of the country's economic output.
Though intended to make the economy more productive in the long run, the size of those initial steps will first serve as a drag, keeping the country in recession for at least another year and helping drive the unemployment rate to near 15 percent in 2011. Read more.
