Shock Doctrine: The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism By Naomi Klein

In the introduction to her book “Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” (2007) Naomi Klein illustrates how governments take advantage of natural or man made disasters to introduce exploitive policies and other changes in country while its citizens are still in shock and have to deal with the crises at hand. I agree with Klein’s statement that countries often use Shock Therapy to deal with crises and in my essay I will specifically look at financial crises. The argument I use to support my view is the situation in Greece, its recent developments and how the country generally has dealt with the economic crises which started in the late 2009. I use this example because it is recent and quite pressing for the European Union and international …show more content…
A recent example of this is Greece. It is not like the crises that started in Greece in late 2009 was unpredictable because since mid 1990s there has been small discrepancies in the budget, spending and tax revenues, however, these discrepancies turned out to be much bigger than the Greek government had let everyone believe. As a consequence of the deficits the country experienced it had to borrow money from other countries such as Germany and international organizations for example International Monetary Fund and World Bank. In late 2009 a new government came into power and reported the real numbers of the budget deficits which made the rest of the world worry whether Greece would be able to repay its loans or needed to announce default. In 2010 Greece received new loans in order to avoid default and repay the already borrowed money. Nevertheless, this plan failed. In March 2012 Greece was bailed out for the second time. This time certain conditions by the creditors were made. Finally in 2014 the economy in Greece seemed to have reached the bottom and was starting to recover. A new government led by Alexis Tsipras was elected and a referendum was help where majority of population voted ‘no’ to the bail-out terms set by European institutions. (Kashyap) By the end of June 2015, the amount of money Greece owed was €323bn. …show more content…
Shock therapy used in Greece might just work as the crises seem to have hit rock bottom and the economy is slowly starting to recover. However, there different and less harsh tactics that can be applied to deal with crises for example the five steps presented by Stiglitz. Choosing which technique to use in most cases depends on the government of the country, the leaders and the political system. If the government wants citizens to suffer less they will choose alternative methods to shock therapy and strict measures to deal with