Greek debt talks locked in a downward spiral

Euro Zone: Greek debt talks have been liking kicking a can down the road, now the can is facing the crusher, comments Rupert Wright.

Students clash with riot police during a protest march against economic austerity and education reforms in Athens.

In the long tedious, drawn-out Greek debt talks, which have mainly consisted of "kicking the can down the road", in other words putting off a decision, the can is about to hit the crusher.

Just as happened two years ago when Dubai World announced a debt standstill - with the threat of default - somebody will have to decide whether to honour Greece's debts, help the country to restructure or reschedule them, or throw the nation to the wolves.

Greece's announcement of a gaping budget deficit of about €2.5 billion (Dh12.27bn) this year comes despite the introduction of many austerity measures including putting 30,000 civil servants on "labour reserve". The budget shortfall should be the trigger for Germany and other vehement opponents of further handouts for the beleaguered Greeks. But it appears unlikely they will carry out this threat.

Greece says that although its budget deficit will be cut this year and next it will still miss targets set by the EU, the IMF and the European Central Bank. The government blames the shortfall on deepening recession, which has been caused partly by its own austerity measures.

The country is locked in a vicious death spiral.

"A Greek default is a sort of Pandora's box no one wants to open," Teppei Ino, a currency analyst at the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, told Reuters yesterday.

But this isn't a box. It's a time bomb. And either it gets defused or it keeps ticking, until one day it explodes. Kicking the can down the road and swerving round the crusher is only buying time.

You could argue that if you buy enough time, you can recapitalise and create a firewall around Europe's financial institutions, but this seldom works in practice.

What is needed is a termination, even if it is a controlled default, a debt write-off, and Greece reverts to the drachma. We would all go there for cheap holidays.

As Dubai found, what's in Pandora's box is sometimes less terrifying than the prospect of what might be in it. Until somebody opens the box, the economy of the rest of the world will be in limbo, with investors nervous and rattled like an old tin can.