Once in a while I stumbled upon a piece of writing which is a pleasure to read regardless of the subject. Today I was catching up with Cyprus news when I saw this article in Cyprus Mail. You have to read it even if you couldn’t care less for Cyprus or the state of its economy.
WHEN our finance minister Kikis Kazamias speaks in public about the economy he sounds as optimistic and cheerful as a man who has just been diagnosed with a terminal illness and told he has two months to live.Â
He really does convey the piss-poor state of the economy and its zero prospects with his lifeless, slow, monotone delivery which, if you listen to for longer than a few minutes, you decide to transfer all your money to another country, and if you have no money you are tempted to slit your wrists.
And it is not just the deathly, self-pitying tone of his delivery that is depressing, but what he says as well – things could take a turn for the worse at any moment, that there may be a need for more austerity measures and at best we would achieve zero growth in 2012.
This litany of gloom did not prevent the opposition parties from accusing the government of tabling an over-optimistic budget, as far as its revenue forecasts were concerned.Â
If Kikis, the merchant of gloom and doom, carries on talking in public, like he has been doing in the last few days, we will have severe depression epidemic spreading across the country, not to mention a major outflow of capital.Â
Doesn’t these just span images upon images in your imagination?