Default Not Inevitable for Greece -- Barron's Blog

        By Dimitra DeFotis
        With a bigger ECB lifeline from European creditors Wednesday, and an S&P upgrade to the Greece credit rating Tuesday -- could the worst be over?
        Standard & Poor's lifted Greece's credit rating by two notches, saying Greek "default on its stock of commercial debt is no longer inevitable" in the next six months to a year, MarketWatch reported, via The Wall Street Journal. S&P_ cited the three-year loan program and EUR7.16 billion ($7.84 billion) in three-month bridge financing secured, in principle, last week. In addition, the ECB expanded its emergency liquidity assistance for Greece Wednesday, by EUR900 million ($981 million).
        But the political brinksmanship internally and with creditors in recent weeks and the Greek financial crisis in June and July have overshadowed May economic positives. The Tweets today from an Athens-based company analyzing the Greek economy, MacroPolis, are indicative of how far Greece needs to go. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is fighting to maintain control, "more than a fifth of Greeks are materially deprived", Greek mortgages are at greater risk of foreclosure and Greek businesses saw big drops in turnover as a result of bank capital controls. The silver lining: Greece did have a current account surplus in May -- the first since September -- and "Greek travel receipts [were] up 17% in May as average expenditure per trip rebounds."
        May was a long time ago.
        The Global X FTSE Greece 20 ETF ( GREK) is up 1% today and xx% this week, while shares of the National Bank of Greece ( NBG) are up 4% today and xx% this week.
        See " Standard & Poor's upgrades Greece."
        (END) Dow Jones Newswires

        July 22, 2015 11:03 ET (15:03 GMT)

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