Greeks see little cause for joy as 8-year bailout era ends

ATHENS,GREECE» There’ll be no dancing in the moonlit streets of Athens.

For all the official pronouncements that Greece’s eight-year crisis will be over as its third and last bailout program ends Monday, few Greeks see cause for celebration.

Undeniably, the economy is once again growing modestly, state finances are improving, exports are up and unemployment is down from a ghastly 28 percent high.

But one in five Greeks are still unemployed, with few receiving state benefits, and underpaid drudgery is the norm in new jobs.

The average income has dropped by more than a third, and taxes have rocketed. Clinical depression is rife, suicides are up, and hundreds of thousands of skilled workers have flitted abroad.

After the end of the bailout Monday, Greece will get no new loans and will not be asked for new reforms.

But the government has agreed to a timetable of savings so strict as to plague a future generation and a half: For every year over the next four decades, governments must make more than they spend while ensuring that the economy — that shrank by a quarter since 2009 — also expands at a smart rate.

“Personally, I can see no hope for me in the coming years,” says Paraskevi Kolliabi, 62, who lives on a widow’s pension and helps out in her son’s central Athens silver workshop. “Everything looks black to me.”