Bust: Greece, the Euro and the Sovereign Debt Crisis

by Matthew Lynn

Overview

Athens, Greece—May Day 2010. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union (EU) were putting together the final details of a $100 billion euro rescue package for the country. The Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou, had agreed to a savage package of “austerity measures” involving cuts in public spending and lower salaries and pensions. Outside, riot police were deployed as protestors gathered to fight the austerity program. A country with a history of revolution and dictatorship hovered on the brink of collapse—with the world’s financial markets watching to see if the deal cobbled together would be enough to both calm the markets and rescue the Greek economy, and with it the euro, from oblivion.

In Bust: Greece, the Euro, and the Sovereign Debt Crisis, leading market commentator Matthew Lynn blends financial history, politics, and current affairs to tell 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.

Bust is a story of government deceit, unfettered spending, and cheap borrowing: a tale of financial folly to rank alongside the greatest in history. It charts Greece’s rise, and spectacular fall from grace, but it also explores the global repercussions of a financial disaster that has only just begun. It explains how the Greek debt crisis spread like wildfire through the rest of Europe, hitting Ireland, Portugal, Italy, and Spain, and ultimately provoking a crisis that brought the euro to the edge of collapse. And it argues that the Greek crisis is just the start of a decade of financial turmoil that will eventually force the break up of the euro, and a massive retrenchment in the living standards of all the developed economies.

Written in a lively and entertaining style, Bust: Greece, the Euro, and the Sovereign Debt Crisis is an engaging and informative account of a country gone wrong and a must-read for anyone interested in world events and global economics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780470976111
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	12/13/2010
Series:	Bloomberg (UK) , #1
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

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.

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Table of Contents

Introduction: May Day in Athens 1

Chapter 1 Now We Are Ten 9

Chapter 2 How to Blag Your Way into a Single Currency 33

Chapter 3 At Club Med the Party Never Ends 57

Chapter 4 The Story of the Swabian Housewife 75

Chapter 5 Fixing a Debt Crisis with Debt 93

Chapter 6 Burying Your Head in the Greek Sand 111

Chapter 7 The Debts Fall Due 127

Chapter 8 The Trillion-Dollar Weekend 149

Chapter 9 Contagion 183

Chapter 10 The Debt-Deflation Death Spiral 205

Chapter 11 How to Break Up a Single Currency 223

Chapter 12 The Global Economy after the Single Currency 243

Notes 263

Acknowledgments 273

About the Author 274

Index 275

Editorial Reviews

Lynn’s book is fast-paced, entertaining and perceptive about the causes of the crisis. He explains how Greece cheated its way into the eurozone in 2001 by supplying the European Union authorities with data that understated the Greek budget deficit by an average of 2.1 percentage points in every year from 1997."
—Financial Times

‘…Lynn blends financial history, politics and current affairs to tell the story of government deceit, unfettered spending, and cheap borrowing.’
—Finance & Management Faculty, October 2010.

‘The more interesting the book, the less likely you are to put it down, and I just wanted to read from beginning to end.’
—Fool.co.uk, MoneyTalk, December 2010.

‘…thrilling account of the Greek financial crisis…lively, engaging, and thought provoking…Bust, reminds us just how interconnected the world really is.’
—Hereisthecity.com, December 2010.

‘…fast-paced, entertaining and perceptive.’ (FT.com, January 2011).

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