Vanderbilt Political Review Fall 2015 | Page 27

INTERNATIONAL FALL 2015 Greece’s very vocal intransigence about its inability and unwillingness to repay international loans has also caused major private divestment. According to Newsweek, from 2010 to 2014, international bank exposure fell precipitously. While in 2010 French banks conducted 40 percent of all lending into Greece, in 2014, following two years of Greek anti-austerity protests, that number is now 0.6 percent. The story is similar for banks in Portugal, Japan, Italy, the Netherlands, and Germany. While loans from the IMF have filled the void in the wake of this private divestment, all evidence indicates that these loans will dry up too, following Greece’s June 5 referendum in which 61.3 percent of its population voted to reject tightened lending terms. Like its public, for years Greece’s politicians have also suspended disbelief and rejected austerity measures that would reign in the Greek public sector. It might be worth noting how mild these suggested austerity measures really were. Economist Tyler Cowen, in a note entitled “How savage has European austerity been?” pointed out that austerity would have in- volved only slight reductions in spending. When the IMF provided a 110 billion euro bailout in May of 2010 and then suggested cutting public spending to the Greek government, the Greek public revolted in a series of massive demonstrations that continued for two years and caused millions of euros of damage to Greece. Most