Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Why it is wrong to bet on a Greek default

As has been written here many times before, the major euro area countries won't let down Greece and there will be a bailout. There won't be a Greek default. There will be a combined action including direct loans at low interest rates from state-sponsored banks, like Germany's Kreditanstalt, along with IMF loans combined with the traditional set of conditions and, probably, some indirect bailout of Greece through the European Central Bank as the ECB will more or less "secretly" buy circulating Greek debt in order to keep down its interest rates and facilitate additional financing of Greek debt at international private markets.
A few months from now the Greek drama will be forgotten or only be remembered as one more strange episode in the long history of strange episodes of international finance. Or, to put it in another way, the so-called Greek "tragedy" or the Greek "drama" will be remembered more as a "Greek comedy". After all, European countries, and Greece quite prominently, have so many things to fall back on when times get tough that it is only a matter of (short) time for them to make a recovery -- Greece included.

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