2010 1
Greece vs Argentina (not football)
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Micro with No Comments
Argentina has had the biggest default known in history. Yet when you look at Argentina before it blew up, it was in much better shape than Greece is today. Argentina had a deficit that was 3% of GDP, Greece 13.6%. Argentina had debt to GDP ratio of 50%, Greece of 115%. Argentina had a foreign trade deficit of 2%, Greece of 10%. Even if it all goes well for Greece, debt will be 150% of GDP in 2016. Two lessons on this: One is that Argentina could have paid without defaulting. The other one is that Greece probably has to go bankrupt. There has to be a mechanism for countries to go bankrupt. How will a new generation of Greeks grow with so much debt and few growth prospects?
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