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Moody's has cut the rating of six Greek banks a day after the lowering of the country's credit rating at the beginning of the week. National Bank of Greece, Eurobank, Alpha Bank, Piraeus, Attica Bank and Agricultural Bank failed to avoid the impact of international assessors and their credit rating was reduced as a consequence of the broken investor confidence in Greece's ability to cope with its debt crisis alone.

In particular, the credit rating of National Bank, Eurobank, Alpha Bank and Piraeus was cut to Ba3 from Ba1. The rating of Agricultural Bank and Attica fell to B1 from Ba2. The assessment applies to the state of banks' deposits as well as their debts. The main problems which, according to Moody's, necessitated the updating of the credit rating of the banks are the strong pressure on their liquidity and capital adequacy. The report states that the expectations for the next assessment are of negative outlook.

The consequences for the Athens Stock Exchange after the credit rating of Greece cutting at the beginning of the week proved ruthless. It ended up with losses of 3.8% on Tuesday evening and closed at 1.525 points with a total turnover of 133.64 million euros. Not so black, however, was Wednesday, when a slight positive increase of 1.02% was registered on the stock exchange and the main index was 1.541 points at the end of the day.

The major problem according to international investors is that local banks hold a serious package of Greek government bonds. They are only tightening the knot around the neck of financial institutions in Greece, especially in terms of the financial vacuum in which Greek banks rely mainly on funding from the European Central Bank. Although according to Moody's the holders of Greek government bonds will not suffer losses, the agency estimated that the probability of bankruptcy of the country or drastic change in debt has risen. This is the statement of the analysts, cited by Naftemboriki.

Not so favourable, however, are the economic analysts Bloomberg referred to, who estimated that the external debt of Greece will be inevitably "haircut" by almost 50%. According to the Chief Investment Officer of LNG Capital LLP Louis Gargour, Greece will need to restructure its debt not once, but twice. The economist stated that the first restructuring will not be enough and will need to be revised later. He explicitly said that government bonds have to be haircut by 50% given the large amount of debt and the fact that it can not be paid.

Losses from the restructuring of government debts generally vary between 15% to 75%, said the senior economic adviser of UBS AG George Magnus, cited by Bloomberg. All debt crisis begin with financial crisis, so the idea of debt restructuring should be "embraced" at one point, said Magnus adding that the first step is therefore the financial stabilization of banks.