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Opinion
Matthew A. Winkler

Guess Which Mediterranean Economy Didn’t Crumble

Global investors recently bought 2.5 billion euros’ of Greek bonds. They weren’t hallucinating.

A lot to think about.

A lot to think about.

Photographer: Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images

Greek revival is an architectural style involving columns of marble. It’s also a good description of a ridiculed nation’s prestige among investors, involving columns of numbers measuring unexpected economic durability.

Global investors snapped up 2.5 billion euros worth of Greece’s 10-year bonds last month, the first such offering in nine years. That made the Hellenic Republic's debt the world’s most prized, buoyed by gross domestic product growth that’s outperforming Germany, France and the euro zone.