GREEK BELT TIGHTENING

CURVY Evangelos Venizelos, Greek Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance and Professor of Law, former head of the Bank of Greece and the Greek National Radio Council, head of the Board of Greek National Public Administration and other highly-paid positions which even he lists on his personal curriculum as “sundry positions” of little importance, is at the moment happily celebrating the positive outcome of his country not having to pay 800 billion trillion zillion dollars of money that has been loaned to it over the last fifteen years.

SURELY THIS MUST BE A WAKE-UP CALL to many people who have invested or are thinking about investing in the Portuguese debt. If the Greek government can beg and be bailed and then use legerdemain to not owe now what it owed in the past, one must weigh up whether investing in the next lost cause, Portugal, is a healthy option.

BUT GREECE HAS ALWAYS BEEN AT THE FOREFRONT of invention and, I must admit as a Classics student, underhand ways of getting out of a mess. I wonder whether the Health Minister, Andreas Loverdos, seen alongside our belt-tightener, might be, in this picture, off to "get down to work" to improve the health of the finance minister in ways that can be done without wearing track suits and having to go huffing and puffing to Marathon.