If you enjoy the content at iBankCoin, please follow us on TwitterThis is how quickly the European debt crisis devolves: Austerity, viewed by markets as saving grace for Greece just a day ago, has quickly moved into irrelevance as banks and insurers continue to find a path around default.
No doubt cutbacks are an integral part of the Greek future.
Violent street protests aside, the county’s financial standing simply won’t allow it to continue along the path of bloated government, massive public giveaways and the debt-on-top-of-debt strategy it has employed for too long.
But without some type of structural default on its current obligations, all the austerity in the world won’t make Greece’s problems go away.
“Greece and a number of other European countries cannot repay their debt. In fact they will never be able to repay their debt under current conditions because their economies are not competitive globally,” banking analyst Dick Bove at Rochdale Securities wrote in an analysis. “Therefore, these countries must, and in my judgment will, repudiate their debt.”
Indeed, looking at Greece’s onerous debt maturity schedule, it is almost impossible to imagine another alternative.
Starting with a 2.4 billion-euro repayment on July 15, Greece then has to pay, in euros: 900 million on July 19, 1.5 billion on July 20 and 1.6 billion on July 22. August doesn’t get much better, when the nation has a 1.6 billion-euro payment due on Aug. 19 and 9 billion euros due to the next day.
Joined Nov 11, 2007
31,929 Blog Posts
what seems to be the thinking in all of this: the longevity factor. it really doesnt matter who owes what to whom. all of these countries debts, including of course the u.s., we are no different from greece, or the piigs,we will never be able to pay anyone back for a long long time to come. didnt the u.s. take 70 yrs to pay off the spanish american war, etc. most of us will be dead, and it wont make a bit of difference,and will be left up to the next generations to come to take care of business. it will just get passed on and on. what troubles me,is that asking any common man to take less of anything that they have worked for in the right here and now is absurd at best. knowing full and well that greece nor anyone else in the piigs could come up with that kind of monies to pay off so and so on certain days,of certain amounts of money. it’s like telling homeless people who have no money,that they have to pay 15 bucks today, and thursday you have to pay 50, and on friday it will be 65 bucks. you cant squeeze blood from a rock,where is it going to come from……..it will eventually have to come from,longevity. bit by bit and not by taking parts of a country for repayment…….what, are we gonna give the chinese california because we owe them money that we cant repay..absurd,completely and totally absurd. and if the greek politicians think that that is the way to go, they are wrong. they are not saving their country, they are giving it away…and then what’s left, nothing. and they will still owe money. it’s real nice to know,that there are great minds out there that figured all this out.(sarc) on.