(Repost from March 9:) Items on Greece

by Dollars and Sense

A couple of items on Greece: First, Mike-Frank Epitropoulos, who is working on an article for us on the Greek debt/default situation, sent us this image. The German magazine Focus ran a cover story headlined "Cheats in the Euro Family," with an image of the Venus de Milo giving (the rest of Europe) the finger. The Greeks were outraged, with one newspaper, Eleftheros Typos, saying that Europe is "threatened by financial naziism," according to the Wall Street Journal's blog The Source. And then there was the magazine cover response. I can't find a translation of the headline, and my Greek is rusty (and was always archaic anyhow).


Then there's this juicy piece from last Friday's Financial Times. The FT's headline writers couldn't resist the term "Greek drama," but the photo that went with this article in the print edition was especially nice: a view of the sun-drenched rooftop restaurant at the Hotel Grande Bretagne in Athens, with the Parthenon in the background; it was not just a gratuitous shot of the Acropolis—this was actually where the hedge-fund managers met to plot their speculative exploits.

Funds' role in Greek drama examined

By Sam Jones, Hedge Fund Correspondent

Published: March 5 2010 02:00 | Last updated: March 5 2010 02:00

On January 28, a cloudy, drizzly day in Athens, Goldman Sachs played host to a hotchpotch group of 10 clients at the Grande Bretagne, a palatial belle epoque hotel overlooking Syntagma square and the old royal palace, now the home of the Vouli, the Greek parliament.At dinner on the rooftop—with an unimpeded panorama of the Acropolis as the backdrop—the clients; ten bankers, asset managers and hedge fund analysts, ruminated on the future of the Greek economy—and of course, how to make money from it.Events since—a vicious collapse of confidence in the Greek debt market—have made some of those present, millions. But there has been a price. The dinner and the two-day schedule of meetings it bisected, is now one of a handful of events at the centre of a growing political backlash against some of the biggest and most powerful traders in the debt markets. Hedge funds and more broadly financial 'speculators' are finding themselves under attack from politicians and regulators on both sides of the Atlantic, who accuse them—including some of those Goldman chaperoned around Athens in late January—of exacerbating the Greek credit crisis in an effort to spin a quick buck.

Read the rest of the article.

Labels: Acropolis, Athens, Greece, hedge funds, sovereign debt, speculation

 

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3/11/2010 03:12:00 PM