, Columnist
How to End Greece’s Banking Nightmare
Athens has woken up to the need to deal with its mountain of bad loans. But it must combine its disparate ideas into a single plan.
Greece is edging toward political normality, but its banks are a totally different story.
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If a country has a problem with its banks, the thing to do is to come up with a strategy and execute it swiftly. The trouble with Greece is that it has too many plans — and is taking too long to choose between them.
The Greek banking system is saddled with a very large number of non-performing loans, a legacy of protracted recession. Nearly half of all loans have gone sour, according to Bank of Greece data, and that’s only marginally less bad than the nadir of a year and a half ago.