Greek Day of Reckoning Looms in Ponzi Europe: Mario I. Blejer

One of the undeniable features of the European debt crisis is the tendency to obscure, verbally and politically, the real issues at play. Euphemisms, statistical gimmicks, meaningless institutional squabbling, undecipherable acronyms, and plain double talk proliferate as part of the debate.

In my experience as central-bank governor in Argentina during the worst financial crisis in our history, at the beginning of this century, I learned how useful it is to cut through the fog in order to rebuild credibility and to allow a more lucid evaluation of the outlook. While there are few similarities between Greece’s present debt situation and Argentina’s in 2002, it is possible to reduce the recent talk of a default to four basic issues and make some predictions.