Greeks Line Up for Money and Stock Up on Goods as Cash Rationing Starts
ATHENS — Uncertain what might happen next, with banks and financial markets closed, across Athens people wasted little time Monday, rushing to the nearest A.T.M. to withdraw their new daily maximum of 60 euros, determined to raise every last cent while they could.
Yet, even as Greeks faced a new level of chaos and hardship this week, they were being confronted with another unsolvable riddle: a vote on their future that was even more uncertain than the current chaos.
“Simply put, we’re confused,” Eleni Gardikioti, 31, an insurance worker, said. “We don’t understand what games they are playing, whether to stay or go and whether there is a permanent goal in all that.”
There were good arguments on each side, she said, as she fished out a coin to give to a beggar.
In a referendum on Sunday, Greeks will be asked to decide whether to accept a take-it-or-leave-it bailout offer by the country’s creditors, and remain mired in austerity in the eurozone, or reject the deal but suffer the consequences of leaving the euro.
The question is not as simple as it might sound. For one, the bailout offer has already been withdrawn by the eurozone’s finance ministers, so it is not clear the parties could reach a deal now even if Greece voted in favor.
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras clouded the matter further on Monday by saying a vote against the deal would not necessarily mean abandoning the euro, but rather would give him leverage to negotiate a better agreement with Greece’s creditors — other European Union nations, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank.
Anecdotally, how people said they would vote in the referendum had little to do with those considerations, but broke down largely along lines of age and class. Older and more affluent Greeks leaned toward voting yes and younger and poorer Greeks leaned toward no, essentially as a protest of what they viewed as foreign oppression.
Whatever the outcome, Athenians were busy adapting to the new reality on Monday, focusing more on getting through the week than worrying too far into the future. People were emptying supermarket shelves, filling up containers at gas stations and lining up at automated teller machines, hoping that the supply of hard cash would not run out before it was their turn.
Greeks lined up on Monday at banks, which were ordered closed, with daily A.T.M. withdrawals limited to 60 euros, or about $67. Credit Petros Giannakouris/Associated Press
Athenians everywhere wore looks of anxiety, despite a pleasantly cool summer day.
Over the last few weeks, Greeks have withdrawn billions of euros from the banking system, leading to capital controls. On Monday, customers found many cash machines shut down until noon to be reprogrammed with the new limit. For hours after the machines began operating again, people stood in line, waiting to receive their rations of cash.
Standing outside the cash machines seemed to have a counterintuitive effect on some people, hardening them against the European creditors rather than making them angry at their own government.
“We’re all happy with Tsipras!” said Eleni Hartofilaka, waiting to take her €60 (about $67) out of an Alpha Bank branch. “We’re happy for the Europeans to learn not to be on top of us.”
For some, the word “no,” or “Oxi” in Greek, has a historical symbolism that makes it even more appealing in the present context. As every Greek schoolchild knows, the annual Oxi Day commemorates the answer, in spirit if not verbatim, delivered by Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas to a demand from Mussolini to allow Italian forces to occupy strategic parts of Greece at the beginning of World War II.
Ms. Gardikioti said that she and her boyfriend had limited savings and little to lose. Even if a no vote meant a retreat to the previous Greek currency, the drachma, after a period of hardship, the Greeks would recover.
At the Evangelismos Metro station near Central Athens, Dimitra Papaioannou, 30, had just taken a free subway ride, after coming to the city by bus from the northern town of Larissa to visit her doctor. She had arrived in Athens with almost no cash because the A.T.M.’s in her hometown had been bled dry.
She said she had not decided whether she would vote on Sunday, but if she did, she would vote no to the European bailout proposal. Unlike city folk, she could be self-sufficient, she said, rolling a cigarette.
“I will go to the village and dig to live,” she said. “I believe no one should fear. Here in Athens, they will go hungry. In the village we have our field, a chicken. Of course, doctors we won’t have, or maybe.”
A few blocks away, the A/B Vasilopoulos supermarket, a major chain, was mobbed, as though a major hurricane were on the way. A cashier said she was exhausted as she rang up groceries at lunchtime. “You should have seen it this morning,” she said.
Discounted Pampers were sold out, and people were forced to buy the more expensive version. Housewives were leaving with gigantic bundles of toilet paper. The cheapest brands of olive oil and pasta had sold out. Stock clerks were everywhere, replenishing supplies of everything from sugar to frozen vegetables.
“Don’t panic,” one woman urged another, as she picked over the noodles. “I think the Greek companies like Misko will still be producing pasta even if we cannot import it.” Italian ravioli, she added, examining a package, maybe not.
Several people said that the general mood had become so distressed and polarized that people were talking about the possibility of civil war. Mr. Tsipras seemed to be alluding to such fears in his brief speech Sunday night announcing the capital controls. He urged “dignity” and “calm” and echoing Franklin D. Roosevelt, said “Our only fear is fear.”
At a small but elegant antiques store, Art & Craft, the proprietor, Miltiades Macrygiannis, actually had a customer, though, he noted after she left, she spoke Greek with an accent, indicating that she was foreign.
Surrounded by hanging lamps, carved mirrors, old worry beads and objects bearing the evil eye, to ward away evil, Mr. Macrygiannis said that like most businesses, he could not get cash to replenish his stock now that cash controls were in effect.
He planned to vote yes, but reluctantly, as the lesser of two bad choices. “I wouldn’t imagine, even as a nightmare, the scenario of going back to the drachma,” Mr. Macrygiannis said. “It would take 10 years to get us back on our feet again.”
On the other hand, “You can say yes to this agreement, a very painful agreement, and it means too many taxes, cutting down on pensions.”
Those who will gain, he said, are the superrich who have squirreled away their euros in Switzerland or the Virgin Islands, and will be able to swoop in to buy devalued goods and property.
What upset him most, he said, was the uncertainty. “The Greek government right now, they don’t give me the next day,” he said. “They ask us to vote no. Then at least tell me what is going to happen the day after.”
He added: “We fought to be in the European Union for so many years. Greece will not be in Europe but countries like Bulgaria and Romania will? It sounds like a bad joke.”
nyt
