greece looks like hopeless case.

Is anybody else spooked by situation in Greece?

The amount of money the country owes - sovereign debt - is 300 billion Euros or roughly $A435,000,000,000.

That is pretty impressive number.
Given that there is 11 million Greeks, each of them owes $A40,000 odd each.

Just imagine a baby born in Greece. It is starting life with 40,000 bucks in debt courtesy of the consecutive governments.

Even on the interest offered in the assistance package ( 5% ) the repaymeent is going to be $2000 a year for each Greek.
Market interest rate at which investors were prepared to lend to Greek government by buying new Greek bonds reached 11.6%

So taking a bit conservative 10%, without the assistance every Greek needs to pay $4000 tax just to cover the interest on their sovereign debt.

Take average family, say two parents and two kids, each parent needs to pay 4000-8000 each in tax just to keep country from defaulting.
That is before any public servants get paid.
Teachers, nurses, policeman, soldiers, main roads employees, electricity and water employees, transport etc.

Recent Foreign Correspondent program about this Greek crisis stated that average wage for public servant is about a 1000 Euro a month or say $1450 a month. From that, just to pay interest only $167 to $334 depending how much interest is government paying.

It gets worse, for example taxi drivers are paying flat tax 1200 Euro a year or $A1740 which is less the average required to pay the interest at minimum rate.

Clearly there will be more than half the population ( children, retirees etc) who pay no tax or much less than needed to cover interest.

Now business is probably not paying much either. The only thing they seem to make and export, is Ouzo and some Retsina, Feta cheese and some olives and olive oil.

Tourism used to be good foreign exchange earner when Greece was cheap holiday, but those days are gone. Since introduction of Euro the prices skyrocketed and holiday in Greece is very poor value. Your dollar will go a lot further in Turkey or Croatia and you get essentially same product.

So how on Earth will the Greeks ever get on the top of its debt? Borrowing more just sinks the country deeper.

Have they got any assets to sell? I can not think of any, selling antiquities or islands in not very popular with population. The only way I can see would be privatization of government assets if they have any left. Things like transport, electricity etc.
Of course private industry will want to make profit and so the prices are likely to rise together with cutting down number of employees , ie unemployment would rise.

I think the country is rapidly going down the gurgle and we better get ready for boatloads of Greeks arriving at Christmas Island.

Brian