Any supposed improvements will be because of austerity imposed upon them. Without that constraint they will let loose again with the excessive spending.
If the GDP has plummeted, how can any alleged "cyclically adjusted surplus" exist?
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Then there are the cuts that have been reversed, such as the reopening after two years of the state broadcasting company ERT, which started programmes again this year.
The problem therefore is not so much that Greece is incapable of reform or does not know what needs doing, but that it has wasted five years of the bailout without making serious attempts to fix the structural problems that beset the economy - and in many cases it is actually going backwards.
If it had started five years ago, it might have been seeing the results by now as countries like Ireland and Spain have done, but one of the reasons that the Greek bailout has reached another crisis point is that it has hardly started.
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