Rick Steves' Greece: Athens & the Peloponnese amazon.com
Bust: Greece, the Euro and the Sovereign Debt Crisis - By Matthew Lynn amazon.com
Greece's 'Odious' Debt: The Looting of the Hellenic Republic by the Euro, the Political Elite and the Investment Community - By Jason Manolopoulos amazon.com
Understanding the Crisis in Greece: From Boom to Bust - By Theodore Pelagidis amazon.com
The Imminent Crisis: Greek Debt and the Collapse of the European Monetary Union amazon.com
Eyewitness Greece - Athens and the Mainland - 352 Pages
Financial markets and economic growth in Greece, 1986-1999 [An article from: Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions & Money]
Athens Demographics:
The population count for Athens was 10,964,020 in 2001. According to eurostat, in 2008 Greece had a total estimated population of 11,262,000. Of this, some 695,979 are estimated to be non-Greek.
July 7, 2010
Wall Street Journal: "Not too late for Greece"
Michael Heise at the Wall Street Journal arguing against the "street wisdom" of a sovereign default for Greece:
" Conventional wisdom increasingly has it that the €110 billion European Union/IMF bailout for Greece will only delay a debt restructuring. The Greek economy, so the argument goes, could not possibly pull off the required austerity program.
But back-of-the envelope calculations supposedly showing Greece's inevitable fiscal death are somewhat exaggerated. The slashing of the Greek budget deficit (13.6% of GDP last year) is actually proceeding faster than planned. The consolidation program agreed with the EU and the IMF projects for this year a deficit of 8.1%. In light of the progress in the first five months of this year, Greece might even manage to undershoot this target.
That's partly because the government had already started to curb its spending—particularly on the investment front—before the EU and IMF imposed the current savings program. And if Greece implements the measures in full, more substantial savings will come in the second half of the year.
...Greece's predicament is anything but a lost cause. It does not make sense to rashly evoke an unprecedented sovereign default in the euro area, which would have unforeseeable consequences for other member states and the standing of the euro as an investment currency.
Driving the campaign for debt restructuring is often the desire to ensure that private investors foot some of the bill. But debt waivers would automatically also drag in EU taxpayers, who'd be left with at least a partial write-down on the loans their governments had granted to Greece. "
ARCHIVE PAGE - MAY 19 TO MAY 31 2010
ARCHIVE PAGE - MAY 1 TO MAY 18 2010
ARCHIVE PAGE - DEC 2009 - MARCH 2010
