Yet Another Turn South for Greece

Hold your hand up if you are just about as sick of hearing about Greece. The Greek people are being forced into more pain and the nation seems to need more and more money and more and more time to get compliant with creditors. This seems to be the case now, immediately after the troubled nation approves each new round of austerity measures. Despite having passed the latest round of austerity measures, articles are out that Greece needs billions more in aid. With the nation already in a depression, unfortunately more austerity cuts are likely to only add to the economic woes.

Today's market drop in Athens is tied to bank recapitalization efforts that appear to be at half the price and highly dilutive. And now Bloomberg says it may need another $15 billion and Reuters is talking about the continued rise of the extremist Golden Dawn party. Now we have the IMF and other European nations effectively trying to praise Greece for its efforts made, which is simultaneous with other reports of more delays on the financing even after the austerity vote.

Wall St. is not viewing Athens with any favor at all. The National Bank of Greece S.A. (NYSE: NBG) is seeing its ADRs down 12% to $1.955 and even the Global X FTSE Greece 20 ETF (NYSEMKT: GREK) is down 5.6% to $15.19 so far this Monday.

Greece is becoming a story that is nearly impossible to cover. There are too many nations (or states) in Europe that get to hang an axe over Greece's head each and every day. Then there are too many outside creditors that get to have their independent voices, which is unfortunately the downside of being deeply in debt and entirely dependent on outside aid. There is no clear leading party in Greece that outsiders believe can hold up to the next confidence vote, and that only brings the risks of another election and the potential breaking of prior promises and agreements.

At some point the powers that be are going to have to just come to an acceptance of the obvious.

JON C. OGG

Filed under: 24/7 Wall St. Wire, Austerity, International Markets Tagged: featured, GREK, NBG