Larissa, with about 250,000 inhabitants, is the capital of the agricultural region of Thessaly in central Greece. A rather faceless locale, but it is the talk of the town in Stuttgart, the cradle of the German automobile industry, and, particularly, in the Porsche headquarters there. The reason? Larissa tops the list, world-wide, for the per-capita ownership of Porsche Cayennes, the pricey SUV. The proliferation of Cayennes is a curiosity, given that farming is not a flourishing sector in Greece, where agricultural output generated a mere 3.2 per cent of GNP in 2009 (down from 6.65 per cent in 2000) and transfers and subsidies from the European Commission provide roughly half of the nation’s agricultural income. A couple of years ago, there were more Cayennes circulating in Greece than individuals who declared and paid taxes on an annual income of more than €50,000, a figure only slightly above the vehicle’s list price.
The surreal situation in Larissa offers an apt metaphor for the predicament of Greece itself. By the end of 2009, Greek public debt stood at 127 per cent, the deficit at 15.5 per cent and the current account deficit at 11 per cent of GDP. In addition, the outgoing conservative government had failed to address these long standing problems and had succeeded in driving the country to the brink of bankruptcy. At the same time, it had consistently misreported statistics to European authorities, compromising the credibility of the country at a time when it needed it most.
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