Greece lures hedge funds and rebuilds market trust while NATO looks to put Greenland saga behind it
At the height of the last decade’s financial crisis, Greece was not only struggling to keep capital in the country, but its borrowing cost was also sky high.
Today, Greece is wooing the world’s leading hedge funds with a new tax regime designed to lure investors to establish substantial operations in Athens, and we’ve already seen it persuade billionaire Chris Rokos and the hedge fund Millennium Management to establish a presence in the country.
At the same time, Prime Minister Mitsotakis highlighted Greece's economic success and its progress on the fiscal front this week in meetings on the sidelines of the UNGA in New York, emphasizing that Greece’s borrowing costs are now lower than those of four G7 countries - the US, the UK, France, and Italy.
This news comes at a tense time in global markets, as government bond prices fall worldwide, and yields rise accordingly.
Moving us to global developments, President Trump used the UNGA as an opportunity to once again lay out a “winner takes all” vision of US power, while sealing a deal over Greenland that potentially removes one of the biggest thorns in the transatlantic relationship.
As the US and its allies look to put the Greenland issue behind them, a great deal of uncertainty remains between Washington and its NATO partners, and this was on full display recently as EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called for Canada and the EU to move beyond their existing free trade agreement and create an “Alliance for the Future.”
Charles Kupchan, Eleni Varvitsioti, and Dimitris Vayanos join Thanos Davelis this week as we take a closer look at all of these developments.
A little more info on our guests:
Charles Kupchan is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and professor of international affairs at Georgetown University in the Walsh School of Foreign Service and Department of Government.
Eleni Varvitsioti is the Financial Times correspondent for Greece and Cyprus.
Dimitris Vayanos is a Professor of Finance at the London School of Economics, co-editor of the book "Beyond Austerity: Reforming the Greek Economy”, and member of the Pissarides Commission which developed a growth plan for Greece in 2020.
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