Greece's Piraeus Bank offers relief to poverty-stricken borrowers (writes off debt)

Reuters ^ | 4-23-15 | George Georgiopoulos

[dynachrome]

Piraeus Bank will write off credit cards and retail loans up to 20,000 euros ($21,484) for Greeks who qualify for help under a law the leftist government passed to provide relief to poverty-stricken borrowers, it said on Thursday.

[dynachrome]

This will work well I am sure!/s

[RushIsMyTeddyBear]

And who picks up the tab?

[iacovatx]

“And who picks up the tab?”

The large banks in Greece have a lot of capital from the EU through the ECB, and from the IMF which includes $’s from you and me. If you were a Greek bank and knew the end was near and that the current rules regarding reserves and paying back the creditors would be irrelevant in a few weeks, what might you do? Perhaps you would hand out your remaining money to Greeks—especially those who might befriend you later but anyone you have to face once the rest of Europe abandons you.

[willywill]

you say a few weeks. this greek tragedy has been going on for years, with the talking heads on cnbc endlessly talking about greek bailouts that you keep saying, I thought that bailout was last week.
it will never end.

[lightman]

Suprised Ø hasn’t thought of that.

[pepsionice]

Someone will eventually sit down and write this 800-page epic journey to bankruptcy.

Up until the 1960s...Greece was just a third-world country with no real industry except shipping and a marginal agricultural industry. When tourism arrived and there was actual cash floating through the economy....this flipped everyone over. Then the government wanted taxes and would then reward various voter blocks for supporting their parties. After a while, the Greeks figured out various ways to avoid taxes, but the government couldn’t dig itself out of revenue rewards for voters. The rest is history.