One Third Of Athens Businesses Shuttered

Two weeks ago we showed the human aspect of the absolute economic collapse in Greece (because depression is too light a word to describe what is happening in this globalist vassal collony) when charting Greek unemployment surging by 1% in one month to 24.4%, and which as of September is likely nearly 30%. What this means in practical tax revenue terms (if the tax collectors were actually doing their job collecting taxes, instead of striking) is that there is nobody generating any economic products and services, and thus no state revenues. Today, Kathimerini confirms this, in a report that almost a third of all business in Athens have now shuttered: "The number of shuttered shops on the capital's busiest commercial streets, Panepistimiou and Stadiou, also hit a record high in August, reaching 34.7 percent on Panepistimiou and 42 percent on Akadimias, up 14 percent in the last six months." And so the close loop continues as fewer businesses are around to hire less people, generating less state revenue, encouraging less businesses to open and so on, until the entire country collapses in a heap of worthless debt.

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Greece's deep recession has forced almost a third of businesses in the capital's commercial district to close down as shrinking incomes and frequent strikes drive Athenians away.

Tens of thousands of small businesses, which make up a big chunk of the struggling economy, have shut since Greece secured a 110-billion-euro bailout package in 2010 in exchange for promises of painful austerity measures.

On the capital's cobbled pedestrian shopping streets, long lines of shops are boarded shut while others have «Everything must go» signs plastered across their windows. Some arcades, once bustling with activity, are empty and enclosed by derelict buildings.

In the city's «commercial triangle», where generations of merchants had run successful businesses a stone's throw from the central Syntagma Square, an August census by retail lobby group ESEE found 31 percent of shops had closed.

That was up 13 percent from August 2010, just months after the government secured the first of two multi-billion euro international rescue packages.

"There are no signs that this percentage will fall and this is very worrying,» said ESEE head Vassilis Korkidis, estimating that about 63,000 Greek businesses were at risk of closing down within the next year.

The good news: it is still warm and the millions of hopeless Greeks dont have to worry about heating themselves for at least a few more months. This will change soon.

"It will be a very difficult winter - perhaps the toughest in the last three years,» Korkidis told Reuters. «Many businesses will not make it."

One social class is still doing ok: the wealthy.

While business has slowed across the city, it is less evident in the wealthier suburbs where two of the capital's biggest malls, home to many foreign designer brands, still attract shoppers.

Finally for those who think a comparable confluence of circumstances has never transpired in the past, may we suggest reading up on the last days of the French monarchy, and why holders of guillotine stocks as the anti-rich revulsion finally swept through France first and the entire world next, were the New (pardon the pun) Killing It.