Papandreou Wants Greeks To Vote on Rescue Plan

That would happen in January and increase uncertainty substantially. Or things could get out of hand if markets assume that the plan will never be approved by the Greek voters given how often the latter have been in the streets lately. But Papandreou's government may not survive a vote of confidence on Friday.

The effects of Greece defaulting or not implementing the strict austerity measures in the rescue plan are widely expected to be much more severe than when Lehman Brothers defaulted in September 2008. Which was considered as the triggering event of the last global financial recession. Greece is, at about USD300 billion, the 32nd largest economy.

Mauritius should be able to ride through whatever crises happen given how much slack we've got here.

EU Withholds Cash Greece Needs To Avoid Default

That's the news hitting every screen in the last 24 hours. Europe wants Greece to do some belt-tightening before it pushes the money already on the table towards Athens. Translation: sell public assets.

I don't know if you noticed the PM mentioning in his MIIF speech that lame duck parastatals will be phased out. Hmm, so are we back with the same kind of crap that tagged the DWC as lame duck while putting an infinite amount of money in a hubris-infected company?

Why doesn't he phase out the lame bean-counter first? Things will improve for everybody.

German Bankers Say ECB's Independence Compromised

By buying bonds issued by Greece even after the latter was bailed out by the EU. They suspect Trichet has given in to a request by President Sarkozy and that may be benefiting French banks which have tons of them on their books.

Read the interesting article from Spiegel Online to also find out about the risks involved in managing market yields in this particular case.