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An article by Petros Lazos* published in capital.gr.

The signing of the agreement with creditors on the morning of 13 July has provoked discussions on the total value of the 6 months of "tough negotiations". Since then, there have been an increasing number of articles, comments and mainly different graphics and, of course, the phenomenon will grow even more in connection with the new elections.

The point is that all these numbers and conclusions are absolutely hanging in the air. Some of them are based on real data. The problem is that these data reflect only a (probably small) part of the catastrophe caused in the country and the economy by the strange application of the game theory and the game of the mad (as the author calls former Minister of Finance Yanis Varoufakis - translator’s note). The total amount of damage will be reported after some time, probably years later.

Moreover, many of the facts defined as losses are based on false reasoning. For example, it is easy to say that the 11 billion euro available for bank recapitalization was lost but it is one of the few things that were not lost. Why? Because the amount was removed from the government debt, thus reporting zero overall losses in this respect. The real loss is that banks will require more capital (following, and due to, the six-month experiment on the part of Varoufakis). The amount will vary from 10 to 25 billion euro but will be totally clear after October 2015, if not much later.

The main drawback of this "reckoning" is that it is not trying to assess the remaining (and more important) part of the catastrophe, the one that is not related to financial results. For example, in his television interview a few days ago Alexis Tsipras spoke about the generation of 20-year-olds, "which is lost because of memoranda" and for which "there is nothing I could do." Surely, it is at least disgraceful and shameful for a man aged 41 years, the one who has the most power in Greece, to state that he is unable to help. But it is equally incomprehensible that not one of the "assessors" we have heard, seen and read over the past weeks has specified the losses suffered by youth over the course of 7 months. Nobody is dealing with the fact that a few weeks before the elections in January youth unemployment had dropped by about 7% (from 57% to 50%) and now it has risen again, almost to the levels of that period, with a negative trend at that. Nobody is paying attention to the fact that these young people who had just begun to see the light at the end of the tunnel (and some would have passed their optimism on to others, they in turn on to a third group, etc.) are now again seeing it going down and disappearing while hearing the Prime Minister telling them that he cannot help them. What hope, what dreams for life can these young people have? Does anyone consider THIS loss?

In addition to young people, tens of thousands more unemployed had succeeded in finding a job after October 2013. Poorly paid, under worse conditions than before, but there was hope, a chance for something better in the future.

Thousands of owners of small and medium-sized companies had slightly better days after the summer of 2014, hoping that they would survive and would do something better in the distant future, that it would be worth struggling to survive. Now after the 'proud negotiations' (according to Tsipras) they are forced to tighten their belts again. And to pray to open their firms tomorrow.
 
Nobody is dealing with all these, and many more types of non-financial damage that are impossible to measure. No one is trying to measure what it means to have no personal hopes and dreams for society's tomorrow. And this shows our frivolous and superficial perception of the issue. Unfortunately...

*Title by GRReporter