Greece is highly indebted, bad loans swamp banks, the economy is in tatters... yadda, yadda, yadda. Highly conventional wisdom, the one you get from the popular (and even specialist) media, is always last year's news and not only useless but potentially dangerous.
Following up on my last post on the fast rise of Greek private sector debt during 1998-2008 (i.e. very much yesterday's news) and the resulting collapse, where does it stand now in comparison to other countries?
You may be surprised to know that the country's households and businesses are still very under-leveraged when compared to the rest of the world and the eurozone/EU in particular - just look at the chart below (Data: World Bank, 2016).
Furthermore, the same chart indicates that Greek banks' credit exposure to the private sector is likewise very modest.
I'll let readers figure out what this means for the future of the Greek economy and its banks - but, yeah, I think its becoming more and more realistic to break out the ouzo bottle.
Following up on my last post on the fast rise of Greek private sector debt during 1998-2008 (i.e. very much yesterday's news) and the resulting collapse, where does it stand now in comparison to other countries?
You may be surprised to know that the country's households and businesses are still very under-leveraged when compared to the rest of the world and the eurozone/EU in particular - just look at the chart below (Data: World Bank, 2016).
Furthermore, the same chart indicates that Greek banks' credit exposure to the private sector is likewise very modest.
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