Fiddling While Athens Burns

"Οι αγορές έχουν ένα μήνυμα για την Ελλάδα σήμερα: 
Ήρθε η ώρα να πατήσει το κουμπί του πανικού."

By Katie Martin

The markets have a message for Greece today: It’s time to hit the panic button.
Right now, the country’s officials are bickering over how and whether to activate the support package offered by the euro zone finance ministers and the International Monetary Fund.
Meanwhile, the markets are ...
...offering a stark wake-up call. The cost of insuring Greek debt against default is now higher than insuring debt from Ukraine. Yes, that’s the Ukraine which saw a thumping economic contraction of 15% last year.
To make matters worse, the euro has fallen off a cliff in European trading hours Thursday, after EU statistics agency Eurostat bumped up its estimate of the Greek budget deficit and warned yet again that it’s worried about the reliability of Greek economic data.
The euro is now threatening to break below its lowest point of the year against the dollar–a slump that could attract a whole new wave of sellers.
This is not good.
It’s the market’s way of telling Greece to just get it over with. The EU and IMF officials are in Athens right now. Ask for the help, start working through the complexities of the German approval processes, and get a proper safety net in place before you have to repay a total of €10 billion in bonds next month.
The longer Greece leaves this, the worse the market reaction is going to get.
http://blogs.wsj.com/source/2010/04/22/fiddling-while-athens-burns/