Greeks are pulling money out of their accounts at a dramatically quicker pace as the standoff between Athens and its creditors drags on, prodding the European Central Bank on Friday to raise emergency lending to the country’s banks for the second time in three days.That's over a billion Euros a day being pulled out of Greek banks. Don't worry, though, this isn't a bank run as it will take a full 30 days to exhaust bank reserves and 30 days might as well be next month which is a long time away when you consider how long it takes to get a latte at the cafe down the street while downloading the latest Kim Kardashian photos.
The lending level was extended another €1.8 billion ($2.04 billion), a Greek official said, on top of Wednesday’s upward adjustment of €1.1 billion. Steady withdrawals from banks all year have accelerated in the past week, according to Greek bank officials, rising from an estimated €400 million on Monday to an estimated €1 billion on Thursday. One Greek bank official said the trend continued on Friday with an estimated outflow of a little more than €1.2 billion.
No, this is just normal business transactions and Greek banks just need some loans to tide them over. Meanwhile, the ECB could have paid the July Greek debt bills for a few billion more and gone back to the cafe until August.
A few days ago, I blogged that I was counting on the Europeans to bail out the Greeks because it was relatively inexpensive and allowed them to further postpone the day of reckoning. That may have been wrong-headed. It may be that the post-modern, subjectively moral, secular multiculturalists who run the big European institutions will postpone all decisions until it's too late. That's what's going on now. They may arrive at Greek default through sheer sloth.
The individuals pulling their money out of the country don't operate with the same languid speed and once out, they'll be difficult to tempt back into the country. A billion a day isn't chump change and you got to figure it's only going to accelerate.
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| That doesn't look like a jog to me, that looks like acceleration out of the starting blocks. |
We got back from a trip to Athens on Tuesday. We were there for a week.
ReplyDeleteGrafitti is everywhere. And I became deeply familiar with the state of city roads and sidewalks as we do lots of walking on our trips. Road work is sloppy and sidewalks are crumbling. I was pushing a stroller the whole time, so you better believe it. We actually walked through a protest one day. There were a bunch of little fliers on the ground. I couldn't read the Greek, but there were Anarcho-Commie symbols on them. Protesting generally was light. The occasional banner hung up and there was usually one or two protestors in Syntagma Square. One of the more interesting encounters we had was at the airport.
I was buying snacks for the flight and the cashier commented on my 3 children. She wanted to know where we were from. When I told her America she said "This is okay then". And I asked "Greek couples don't have this many children"? And she said no, not at all. She said "couples get married, but they don't have children. They both work, but they don't have enough money for children". Very sad.
Anyway, wanted to give you some of my impressions.
ReplyDeleteJMI: Yeah, that sounds like Greece. In my opinion, Athens is a polluted dump. And there's always a demonstration to avoid.
As far as I can tell, the entire mainland economy depends on the sale of cheap tchotchkes in the Plaka.
The Greek islands are nice. I did not meet a single cretin on Crete. Except for the tourists, of course.
The retsina is good, too. I don't know why it's so hard to find decent retsina in the States.