The 'privatized Keynesianism'

In a late vote in parliament last night, the Greek PM Georgios Papandreou narrowly won the support of the Parliament for his efforts to pull the country away from the path of bankruptcy. Whether this has given him a second political life is still to be seen. But meanwhile Greece’s financial woes are far from over.

As a EU and Eurozone member, Greece's survival in those European institutions still looks very unceartain. Last week the debate among the Euro leaders and their finance ministers about the issue of more aid for Greece went very tough and controversial. They eventually reached an agreement on another multi-billion Euro injection (mostly from France and Germany), which will probably keep Greece floating for another couple of months.

The most controversial point was the question, how far the private sector banks should be part of the solution. Germany, whose banks are exposed at some €20 billion right now (which is much less than France's exposure by the way) insisted on more involvement from the banks, but France opposed this approach, fearing that its banks could see their rating being downgrated by rating agencies. A compromise was eventually reached, which was to "appeal" to banks to "voluntarily" become involved. But you could easily guess that it's hard to say whether those banks have actually taken this "invitation" seriously. ;-)

( How corporate social responsibility has been a concept too big to grasp )