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Joining the protest "doesn't feel strange, because we are working people like everybody else and we are all shouting out for our rights," he said. The government says the tough cuts are its only way to dig Greece out of a crisis that has hammered the common European currency and alarmed international markets
-- inflating the loan-dependent country's borrowing costs. But unions say ordinary Greeks are being called to pay a disproportionate price for past fiscal mismanagement. "They are trying to make workers pay the price for this crisis," said Yiannis Panagopoulos, leader of Greece's largest union, the GSEE. "These measures will not be effective and will throw the economy into deep freeze." A general strike last Friday was marred by violence during a large protest march. Riot police used tear gas and baton charges against rock-throwing protesters, who smashed banks and storefronts, while left-wing protesters roughed up Panagopoulos as he was addressing a rally. The labor unrest could spark fears that the government will have trouble in implementing its new measures. Greece insists it doesn't need a bailout, and its European partners are reluctant to fund one. But it has called for European and international support for its program, saying that unless it receives that support and the cost for it to borrow on the market falls, it might have to appeal to the International Monetary Fund for help. On Wednesday night, Deputy Prime Minister Theodore Pangalos said Greece could bypass the costly process of borrowing from edgy markets by urging international institutions to buy its bonds at a set interest rate. "We want, if there is an unjustified speculative attack against Greek bonds, to know that one of these institutions that have the substantial means to absorb such market products will come and say
'look here, I am buying Greek bonds at this price, with this interest rate,'" Pangalos told private Mega TV. He did not say which institutions he was referring to, or elaborate on the interest rate. Markets think some kind of rescue would be organized if default looms. Speculation has focused on possible guarantees for Greek bonds or help from state-owned banks in other eurozone countries.
[Associated
Press;
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