Here's a curious thing: I heard from an estate agent in central Hampshire that there's a surge in house prices in the £1m - £1.5m bracket. Wealthy Greeks are arriving bearing wads, and snapping up these properties as fast as they can find them. One local house was on the market for five days.
Funny old world.

The cost of this plan is €130 billion right now, and €170 billion over three years, through the end of 2014; it just continues going up from there, with no end in sight. Remember that total Greek GDP, right now, is only about €220 billion and falling.

Brainard praised "very significant commitments in recent days" made by Greece and its lenders and said that, if met, they will reduce Greek debt loads to levels that officials expect will avert default.

"When you put these things together, they suggest that the path forward for Greece, if it is able to deliver on the commitments, will be a sustainable path," Brainard said. Greece agreed to punishing spending cuts to secure a second bailout, which has led to mass protests but wards off a default that could have come as early as next month.

Brainard cited several signs of progress.

"Europe has made important strides over past days and weeks. New leaders in Italy and Spain are implementing ambitious reforms," she said. "The ECB's actions have helped to ease funding pressures...(and) European banks that were frozen out of the market have been able to borrow again."

Talking of bean counters here is a nice quote from Felix Salmon at Reuters,who gives a good account of what is going on from an economic point of view.



http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2 ... eece-plan/

The rest of the piece is worth a read,though to be honest it just concurs with most other informed views we have seen.The colleagues are throwing the kitchen sink at stopping Greece going down though.

Here's a curious thing: I heard from an estate agent in central Hampshire that there's a surge in house prices in the £1m - £1.5m bracket. Wealthy Greeks are arriving bearing wads, and snapping up these properties as fast as they can find them. One local house was on the market for five days.
Funny old world.


That's an interesting snippet ... rats abandoning the ship.

and now the next wave - slightly less wealthy Greeks

I'm not sure it was ever a game just for the elite. There is the Greek diaspora with the koumbaros clan system. Straight forward blue collar/middle class, what would you do/have done already ?

Well, I suppose Greeks is better than Romanians ... and they can fight each other.

. . . That we know, Britain is being run by clueless eejit boys and jejune girlies but if the US Treasury is overrun with a similar claque to their British counterparts - then - we truly are in deep do-do

I linked to that report on Tuesday, here ...

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2012/0 ... ained.html

He was one of the first to offer an analysis ... the rest are following his view, many of them undoubtedly influenced by it.

This is a highly credible scenario. While the focus is on Greece, the real action is on the Spanish and Italian fronts (and, presumably, Portugal). The aim is to stabilise their economies and erect the famous "firewalls" to prevent "contagion". Once the protective measures are in place, the Greek economy will be allowed to crash and burn – but only then. At the moment, it is too early.

Prime minister Mariano Rajoy has reportedly asked European officials to raise Spain's debt reduction target to 5pc, claiming that reducing it to 4.4pc will be impossible... Spain's finance minister Luis de Guindos told reporters that his country's request to lift its debt targets would not stand out as unusual because there would be a "general reconsideration of targets across the whole of the EU".