A Crisis Tale

In a special event yesterday the Bank of Greece presented the books “The History of Bank of Greece 1928 – 2008” and “The Chronicle of the great crisis – Bank of Greece 2008 -2013”.

The book was presented by the outgoing Governor of the Bank of Greece, George Provopoulos, professor Michael Psalidopoulos and professor George Pagoulatos.

The outgoing governor spoke of his worries that Greece was in a difficult position during the summer of 2012 and that it was close to exiting the Euro.

“The summer of 2012 was a particularly difficult period”, he said and I am ready to take a long vacation now after all that anxiety.

"I lived with the anguish” of that time and added that the Bank of Greece averted the worst scenario "with proper planning and hard work".

In the book there are also special mentions to C-130 military planes that carried 50 euro and 100 euro bills to be ready to feed ATMs across the country. These were the “anguish efforts to save the economy” by the government, as the book says. The bills that came by planes to Greece reached 5.26 billion euros.

Moreover, the same book talks about the “limited” benefit of the two hair-cuts of the Greek debt in 2012. As the book mentions, the net benefit of haircuts did not exceed 51.2 billion euros.