Archive for Greece
Ken Rogoff speaks about the Europe Debt Crisis
It doesn’t allow for embedding but it’s clicking on and listening to why Coface has stopped trade credit for Greek exports/imports. It has now joined Atradius and EH, the world’s two largest trade credit companies. His interview can be found here.
CNBC had this snippet:
Grant Williams, risk underwriting director for Coface, told CNBC, “If you cast your mind back the Greek economy had its first bailout in May 2010 and like a lot of things we are doing as credit insurers we are constantly monitoring all markets and we noticed in 2011 an increase in payment notification and slowdowns.”
As we covered here, Atradius is now joining Euler Hermes in not covering trade credit policies that involve Greek parties. Although a bit macabre the article quotes a business owner in the country:
“This may be the final blow to the Greek market,” Alkis Iliadis, chief executive of a small firm that distributes solar panels, materials for diamond tool makers and chemicals and machines for the marble processing industry across Greece, told Reuters, which gave an analysis of how grim the picture is. “We depend on imported goods. The future looks very dark and we’re very afraid,” he said.
Overall, you should read the entire article since it gives a good idea of Greece’s balance of payments and the current business climate. (greekreport.com)
As has been profiled in several more prominent blogs throughout the Interwebs, the Pew Research Center has conducted a poll of Europeans on who they consider the most– and least-hardworking and corrupt. As someone who lives outside the EU this is interesting as a barometer of anger that many citizens might be feeling and why they feel that way towards certain countries.
Credit: Neatorama
As you can see above, the only country to consider itself harder-working is Greece. The OECD shows that they indeed work longer, but of course “harder” is a nebulous term. Might be why some in Berlin joke about selling the Acropolis.
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