Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Greek Finances Just Get Worse

by Charles Forelle

Wall Street Journal
November 15, 2010

Last month, your Real Time Brussels correspondent had the temerity to point out that Greece’s government revenue was looking too meager to reach the country’s deficit targets, and to note that the Greek finance minister had publicly mused about taking some extra time to repay its €110 billion in bailout loans. For this we received a stern letter from the finance minister’s economic advisor.

Today, the Greek government revised its deficit targets, and over the weekend the Greek prime minister said the notion of taking some extra time to repay its €110 billion in bailout loans “has already been put on the table.”

Loyal Readers will recall our Greek stats scorecard from last week. Now we can fill it in:

Six weeks after saying that it would achieve a deficit this year of 7.8% of gross domestic product, Greece now says the figure will be 9.4%.

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