NYT: Greece Default Likely

Greek default is near. MSM is promoting the idea.

Jack Ewing at NYTwrites:

Only a few weeks ago, the idea that Greece might restructure its debt seemed like the nuclear option. Now restructuring — a polite way of saying “default” — is not only thinkable, but even likely.

Ewing even details how bad things are:

Of course, among politicians talk of default is taboo. “Any notion of restructuring is off the table for the Greek government, has never been put on the table of negotiations and has never been part of any suggestion or proposals made by the I.M.F. to Greece,” the Greek finance minister, George Papaconstantinou, said during a news conference Sunday in Washington, where he was attending a meeting of the International Monetary Fund.

Revised figures Thursday from Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics agency, underlined just what a deep hole Greece is in. Total government debt was €273 billion, or $365 billion, at the end of 2009, or 115 percent of annual gross domestic product. Interest alone could come to €97 billion over the next five years, estimates Carl B. Weinberg, chief economist of High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, New York.

There is no way Greece can manage that burden, he and other analysts say, without far more massive aid than the €30 billion that other European Union members have pledged. Yet political resistance is growing to even that relatively modest rescue plan.