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The Greek and Icelandic IMF programmes compared

Katsimi, Margarita, Zoega, Gylfi, (2015), “The Greek and Icelandic IMF programmes compared”, Voxeu, 19 November. Iceland and Greece were both seriously affected by the Global Crisis, yet their experiences with the implemented IMF programmes have been quite different. In Iceland the programme has been a success, whereas the one in Greece has been a failure. This column explains why this happened. First, Iceland’s external debt was de jure private, while Greece’s …Read More

Pension Poor and Housing rich in Greece? A generational perspective argues for policy entrepreneurship

Tinios, Platon, (2015), “Pension Poor and Housing rich in Greece? A generational perspective argues for policy entrepreneurship”, LSE blog, 12 November The Greek crisis can be framed as an ageing narrative. Greece confronted dilemmas that all ageing societies are bound to face. For example, it was forced in June 2015 to choose between discharging a legal obligation – repaying the IMF– and an ethical obligation – paying pensions; ethics won out. …Read More

A More Ambitious Agenda Needed to Combat Greek Debt

Hyppolite, Paul-Adrien, Roussille, Nina, (2015), “A More Ambitious Agenda Needed to Combat Greek Debt”, Economonitor, 14 November. The July 12th euro area summit ended with a last minute agreement that avoided an imminent ‘Grexit’. Even before negotiating the third bailout program, the Greek government accepted several conditions imposed by its European partners. Among these, the most debated is the creation of a fund to monetize €50bn of public assets through privatizations and other means, …Read More

Alternative measures of government indebtedness

Dias, Daniel A., Wright, Mark L. J., (2015), “Alternative measures of government indebtedness”,Voxeu, 13 November. Measured as a percentage of its GDP, Greece’s debt is higher than that of Portugal and Ireland. This column discusses a range of new techniques for measuring the debts of Greece, Ireland, and Portugal. It argues that plausible alternative measures of indebtedness suggest that Greece is anywhere from as much as 50% more indebted than Portugal and …Read More

New Countdown For Greece: A Bank Bail-in Is Looming

Minenna, Marcello, (2015), “New Countdown For Greece: A Bank Bail-in Is Looming”, Social Europe, 4 November. The debt crisis may no longer be in the spotlight but the financial situation in Greece remains complex. Greek banks continue to survive at the edge of bankruptcy, kept afloat only by Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) from the ECB and by still-enforced capital controls. After the August “agreement”, the Troika has promised the Greek government €25 billion …Read More

Three days to save the euro

Traynor, Ian, (2015), “Three days to save the euro”, The Guardian, 22 October Late on the afternoon of Friday 10 July, as European finance ministers were packing their bags for Brussels to attend yet another meeting on the Greek debt crisis, a shocking email from Berlin landed in the inboxes of a very small number of top officials. Earlier that week, the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, had been given an …Read More

On Structural Reforms and Debt Relief

Milas, Costas, Panagiotidis, Theodore, Boumparis, Periklis, (2015), “On Structural Reforms and Debt Relief “, LSE blog, 15 October The recent trip of the Greek Prime Minister to the US was dominated by repeated calls for debt relief. The Greek pile of debt, currently at 177% of the country’s GDP, is undoubtedly high (see here for a recent analysis on the sustainability of the Greek debt). In July 2015, the IMF (one of Greece’s so-called Troika …Read More

Greece Without Illusions

Varoufakis, Yanis, (2015), “Greece Without Illusions”, Project Syndicate, 5 October “The costliest minor government reshuffle in Greece’s history.” That is at least one way to describe the result of the Greek general election on September 20. Indeed, with few exceptions, the same ministers have returned to the same offices as part of an administration backed by the same odd pair of parties (the left-wing Syriza and the smaller right-wing Independent …Read More

Greek debt remains unsustainable: Here is why

Lukkezen, Jasper, (2015), “Greek debt remains unsustainable: Here is why”, Voxeu, 24 September After 2018, Greece should have market access. This column argues that without further debt relief, this is unlikely to happen. Under reasonable assumptions, its debt ratio will likely not decline, and the financing burden will increase again. Private investors will take these risks into account and will ask for a risk premium that Greece cannot afford in the …Read More

No lessons learned

Mody, Ashoka, (2015), “No lessons learned”, Bruegel publications, 23 September In November 2003, former German Finance Minister Hans Eichel explained why the “deal” between Greece and its creditors is virtually certain to fail. Fending off the pressure then on Germany for more fiscal austerity in an economic recession, Eichel wrote in a Financial Times op-ed: “A policy geared solely to attaining quantitative consolidation targets in the short term runs the …Read More