Greek economy staggers to its feet

The Greek economy is slowly picking itself up off the floor after the debt crisis that began in 2009 wiped a quarter off the country’s national income.

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Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is backsliding on privatisation
(Image credit: 2016 Getty Images)

The Greek economy is slowly picking itself up off the floor. The debt crisis that began in 2009 wiped a quarter off the country's national income the extent of the damage done to the US in the Great Depression. Household incomes slipped by a third, while 25% of shops in central Athens closed. But now things are finally looking up. Growth reached 1.4% last year, the first "substantial" annual increase since 2007, say Nektaria Stamouli and Marcus Walker in The Wall Street Journal.

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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.