The Greek Dilemma

It is almost hard to belive Greece is in crisis. Seldomly do we hear about the Greek mess in these market rally days.

The Greek situation must be adressed asap. What are the options though? Spiegel’s take on the Greek dilemma.

Will Greece obtain fresh aid or slide into bankruptcy? Those will be the fundamental issues at stake when Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras travels to France and Germany this week for meetings with French President François Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Even though the talks won’t result in official decisions, the two most important politicians in the euro zone will know after these meetings just what they can still expect from Greece — and they will draw the necessary conclusions.

For the currency union as a whole, however, the Greek tragedy itself is merely a prelude to the real battle to save the euro. If Greece actually did go bankrupt or left the currency union, the main priority for the rest of the bloc would be to use every means possible to prevent a further dissolution of the euro zone — even if these means have some quite problematic aspects.

The key issue will be to prevent the remaining crisis countries from suffering the same fate as Greece. The main priority will be to prevent the yields on Spanish and Italian government bonds from rising any further. Spain already has to pay very high risk premiums compared with Germany. For 10-year German government bonds, investors last week demanded an interest rate of about 1.4 percent. For Spanish bonds, the rate was 6.7 percent.

Full article here.