Greek fairy tale will end unhappily

The EU can put Greece's day of reckoning off for as long as it likes. But one day the end will come, and it won't be pleasant.

Greece is causing headaches for Brussels and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) once again, says Jeremy Warner in The Sunday Telegraph. The latest episode in the long series of crises and fudges over its debts just in case you've lost count, Greece is on its third rescue package since 2010 was triggered by the IMF "finally coming to its senses". Its report last week showed that Greece is being crushed by its "unsustainable" debt load of 179% of GDP.

Under the deal struck in 2015, Greece was supposed to aim for a primary budget surplus (excluding interest payments) of 3.5% of GDP. It managed 2% last year, but this was due largely to one-off measures; to reach 3.5%, Greece would need extra austerity measures worth 2% of GDP, reckons the IMF. This seems politically impossible and the only realistic way out is debt relief.

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Andrew Van Sickle
Editor, MoneyWeek

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.