Whatever else is going to have to go in the great fire sale of the Greek public sector, whoever else will suffer, the country's prime minister made clear yesterday that one group will be safe: its creditors. Speaking on television, George Papandreou was adamant: "Our national red line is to avoid bankruptcy."
So a nominally socialist government will whack up VAT and go to war with its civil servants, cutting jobs, wages and pensions – all in the name of keeping the bond markets sweet. The itemised list of cutbacks that Mr Papandreou has to make is so long and so major and so deeply contentious that even Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday described it as "very ambitious". Not that Athens is left with much choice: if it wants to remain in the European single currency, it has to make them. And the other members of the eurozone have to force Athens to take the scorched-earth road if the contagion from Greece to Spain and Portugal is to be contained.
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