Bust: Greece, the Euro, and the Sovereign Debt Crisis

By Matthew Lynn

Published Mar 2011

In 2001, Greece saw its application for membership into the Eurozone accepted, and the country sat down to the greatest free lunch in economic history. However, the coming years of global economic prosperity would lead to unrestrained spending, cheap borrowing and a failure to implement financial reform, leaving the country massively exposed to a financial crisis – which duly struck.

In Bust: Greece, the Euro, and the Sovereign Debt Crisis, Bloomberg columnist Matthew Lynn explores Greece’s spectacular rise and fall from grace and the global repercussions of its financial disaster. Page by page, he provides a thrilling account of the Greek financial crisis, drawing out its origins, how it escalated, and its implications for a fragile global economy. Along the way, Lynn looks at how the Greek contagion has spread like wildfire throughout Europe and explores how government ineptitude as well as financial speculators compounded the problem.

Blending financial history, politics and current affairs, Lynn skilfully tells the story of how one nation rode the wave of economic prosperity and brought a continent, a currency, and potentially, the global financial system to its knees. Lively, engaging and thought provoking, Bust reminds us how interconnected the world really is.