Bust Greece, the Euro and the Sovereign Debt Crisis

by Lynn, Matthew

• ISBN13: 9780470976111
• ISBN10: 047097611X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-12-13
• Publisher: Bloomberg Press

Summary

BUST: GREECE, THE EURO, AND THE SOVEREIGN DEBT CRISISIn 2001, Greece saw its application for membership into the Eurozone accepted, and the country sat down to the greatest free lunch in economic history. However, the coming years of global economic prosperity would lead to unrestrained spending, cheap borrowing, and a failure to implement financial reform, leaving the country massively exposed to a financial crisis-which duly struck.In Bust: Greece, the Euro, and the Sovereign Debt Crisis, Bloomberg columnist Matthew Lynn explores Greece's spectacular rise and fall from grace and the global repercussions of its financial disaster. Page by page, he provides a thrilling account of the Greek financial crisis, drawing out its origins, how it escalated, and its implications for a fragile global economy. Along the way, Lynn looks at how the Greek contagion has spread like wildfire throughout Europe and explores how government ineptitude as well as financial speculators compounded the problem.Blending financial history, politics, and current affairs, Lynn skillfully tells the story of how one nation rode the wave of economic prosperity and brought a continent, a currency, and, potentially, the global financial system to its knees. Lively, engaging, and thought provoking, Bust reminds us just how interconnected the world really is.

Author Biography

MATTHEW LYNN is an experienced financial writer and commentator. He is a business and economics commentator for Bloomberg Television, a columnist for Bloomberg News, as well as MoneyWeek in the UK, and a regular contributor to the Spectator magazine in London. Before that, Lynn worked for the Sunday Times in London for ten years as a business writer and columnist. As Matt Lynn, he is also the author of the Death Force series of military thrillers published by Hodder Headline.

Table of Contents

Introduction: May Day in Athens	p. 1
Now We Are Ten	p. 9
How to Blag Your Way into a Single Currency	p. 33
At Club Med the Party Never Ends	p. 57
The Story of the Swabian Housewife	p. 75
Fixing a Debt Crisis with Debt	p. 93
Burying Your Head in the Greek Sand	p. 111
The Debts Fall Due	p. 127
The Trillion-Dollar Weekend	p. 149
Contagion	p. 183
The Debt-Deflation Death Spiral	p. 205
How to Break Up a Single Currency	p. 223
The Global Economy after the Single Currency	p. 243
Notes	p. 263
Acknowledgments	p. 273
About the Author	p. 274
Index	p. 275
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