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Greece finds itself in an uncontrolled economic chaos after the National Statistics Office announced that the recession in the country will not be restricted within the Memorandum of the supervisory Troika margin of 3.8 and 3.9 percent of the gross domestic product. Instead of these values, statistics experts expect the recession to form around 5.2% of GDP. Unpleasant surprise hides the forecast for the budget deficit of the troubled country, according to which the purpose of the memorandum should fall below 7.5 per cent in 2011. Instead, it will be formed at about 9 per cent and will open a budget hole of about 3 billion euros, which will need to be filled with additional taxes. 

Especially critical is the condition of the insurance funds, where revenues decrease and if the state does not provide them with capital, they will not be able to pay pensions. The Employment Service Office also sounded the alarm, since unemployment in Greece this year is expected at about 17 per cent and the government generally cannot predict what resources will be needed for the payment of benefits for people who have lost their jobs. In any case George Papandreou’s team failed to reduce costs to the levels agreed with the Troika and the level for the first six months of the year was 1.13 billion more than budgeted. 

The disappointing economic performance coincided with a rather bleak picture in the euro area, where the signed agreement between Athens and Helsinki for securities in cash against the participation of Finland in the second rescue plan for Greece caused a chain backlash. The PASOK government triumphed after the Summit of the euro area on July 21, but now its decisions seem less and less feasible. And as in the early and middle ages, when incompetent rulers lost  war after war and to finance itself the soldiers used to go around their villages and take property of feudal peasants, the same way Papandreou’s government today, unable to cope with anything, turns to the old tried out measure - taxes. 

Representatives of the supervisory Troika of the European Commission, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund have been insisting for a long time that the Greek budget cannot be maintained only by low and medium taxpayers and that the burden should shift to big capital. The first step is to put an end to tax evasion and press big debtors to repay their obligations. However, this consistently does not happen in Greece and it will be too optimistic to believe that it will happen this fall. 

Well, from now on there are not too many options remaining for the Finance Ministry to try and somehow stabilize the state budget. The first thing it will try to do is to renegotiate the value of the deficit with the Troika. The main argument of Evangelos Venizelos in his conversations with the team led by Paul Thompson will be that the misjudgment of the recession in Greece is due to the shortsightedness of the government's economic team and the representatives of the Troika themselves. This way Venizelos believes he will persuade them to find a compromise on the deficit. 

Despite discussions with the Troika, Greek taxpayers will anyway be pricked with three new special taxes and summons will begin from tomorrow. We are talking about additional "solidarity" tax, additional tax on luxury properties and additional flat license tax on the freelance professions. With those taxes, the government intends to finance the state budget with 9 billion euros. Individuals with annual incomes over 12,000 euros will be taxed with a 1 percent "solidarity" tax, while those with more than 100 000 euros - with 4 percent. This additional tax will apply until 2015 inclusive. All MPs, ministers, deputy ministers, secretaries of ministries, MEPs, regional governors, prefects and mayors will have to pay a "solidarity" tax of 5 percent on their total income. 

Only this year the freelancers are subject to a flat license tax of 300 euros and from next year, depending on the income, it will vary between 300 and 500 euros per year.