A Greek Bankers Insight

The crisis appears to be moving into a new phase, with the spectre of sovereign default raising it’s head - Greece being the current villain. I recently came across this excellent article allegedly written by a Greek banker which accurately describes both the current state of play and gives insight into the problems we all face.

The article argues for Greece to default, and puts the blame for their current situation firmly at the door of Germany and France. These countries threw money at Greece as yields available of their own bonds were not high enough for baby boomer pension funds.

The author asks, “Who was saved by the 2008 banking bailout?”, and suggests that the Baby Boomers’ and not the bankers were the main beneficiaries. Had the banks gone under, bondholders would have lost out and therefore pension funds would have taken a huge hit. This is similar to the current Greek situation as described above, and forms the authors main thesis :

The Greek saga (for I refuse to see it as a tragedy) is all about saving the French and German baby boomers’ retirement.

Other inserting quotes are that

Don’t quote me on this apocryphal statistic, but I’m reliably informed that exactly six Greeks declared more than a million EUR in income last time anybody counted

and