Greek shipping will face further scrutiny
Posted on | April 19, 2010 | No Comments
Our agents in the Greek shipping community have, as our readers know, been warning us that the alleged bail-out package hatched last weekend wouldn’t work. Sure enough, by early Thursday, the rout had resumed: the yields on 10-year Greek sovereign bonds had risen to a near record 7.4 per cent.
It is clear–as it has been for more than a month– that the promise of financial aid will not be anything like enough to lower Greece’s borrowing costs, and allow Athens to keep on paying its debts.
Therefore, also on Thursday, the Greek finance minister sent a letter to the European Commission, asking for, as he put it, “a multi-year economic policy programme with the Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.”
This will, as the Financial Times notes, result in a struggle for primacy between the eurozone and the IMF.
As one economist put it, “This has all the hallmarks of a screwed-up arrangement”. It clearly means that the IMF, the Central Bank and the PASOK socialist government in Athens will eventually do what comes naturally: they will slay the only fatted calf they have, other than the tourist industry: the shipping sector. Up will go taxes, and out will go onshore investment incentives. Ho, for the Cayman Islands!
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