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Athens - The falling price of living in Athens presented the unmistakable spectre of deflation to European Central Bank President Mario Draghi during his visit to the Greek capital this week, yet there is little he will do to heal this pain.
Whatever course of action the ECB opts for to bolster the eurozone's economy, it will take a long time before it trickles down in to Greece, where the prices of everyday purchases from traditional souvlaki meals to frappé coffees have dived.
The long lines of empty yellow cabs scouting the dusty streets of Athens for custom, offering fares at a fraction of prices of their peers in Frankfurt or Brussels, bear testament to the country's sudden adjustment.
Tumbling
All this set the backdrop this week for a meeting of European finance ministers and central bankers including Draghi.
They gathered a short distance from Syntagma Square, the scene of earlier violent clashes over austerity imposed under the country's bailout.
But despite its desire to buoy prices across the 18 countries using the euro, the ECB will do little to halt Athens' tumbling prices.
Policymakers in Frankfurt draw a distinction between 'bad' deflation - spurred by a general downward economic spiral - and 'good' deflation, as in the case of Athens, where falling prices are part of a painful course of medicine to reform the economy.
"The deflation that we see in Greece is, in the eyes of the ECB, the price it has to pay for adjustment," said Carsten Brzeski, an economist with ING.
"It's part of the formula - a necessary evil to get the peripheral countries back to growth."
Low prices
During Greece's debt-fuelled economic boom after adoption of the euro, prices were rising faster than in the euro area. In 2001-2011, they rose by a cumulative 46%, compared to 29% in the euro area.
But the average annual inflation rate in Greece hit -0.9% in 2013, negative for the first time since 1962 and the fall in prices in Greece reached a new depth last November, when they were almost -3.0% from a year earlier.
While the International Monetary Fund predicts slower deflation of -0.4% in 2014, the OECD, a think tank, is forecasting a decline roughly four times as steep this year and next.
Low prices are not unique to Athens.
Eurozone inflation slowed to 0.5% in March, its lowest since the economy was deep in recession in 2009, and its sixth month in what Draghi has called "the danger zone" below 1%.
Although the ECB is not expected to announce any new steps to bolster the economy when policymakers meet on Thursday, the sharper-than-expected fall in prices will fire up the debate as to whether Frankfurt should be doing more.
