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New development offers "Wall Street Journal" - Greece has the opportunity to be assisted by the Institute of International Finance, as has been observed in other similar cases. The reason for this assertion is the visit of Charles Dallara in Athens, managing director of the Institute of International Finance. 

According to the newspaper, Mr. Dallara is in the Greek capital for informal talks with Greek politicians and bankers, including the Prime Minister George Papandreou, in order to find a way for private creditors to help Greece with the new rescue program. 

The newspaper further points out that Charles Dallara is one of the creators of the Brady plan, an initiative inspired by the U.S. Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady, according to which during the 80s banks have given incentives to make concessions on their loans to governments in Latin America. However, according to the publication, Mr. Dallara said the issue with the involvement of private creditors in the Greek debt is more complex than the issues in Latin America in the 80s due to the large number of creditors, the role of international rating agencies and market insurance against failure, however, saying that "this is a narrow road, I do not reject it, it will not be easy, but I do not think it is impossible." 

The Executive Director of the Institute of International Finance is proposing to provide incentives to individuals to refinance Greek government bonds, emphasizing that "the research of the possibility to enhance the quality of new credits should be part of the discussion, given that they will are truly voluntary and to avoid a credit event. " Finally he argues that the situation of European banks and insurance companies, which are now at risk because of the Greek debt, is much healthier in terms of capital structure compared with that of American and Japanese banks in the late 80s. 

Meanwhile, Marta Andreasen (MEP from the UK Independence Party and former chief accountant of the European Commission), with an article in the same newspaper, indicates various revisions made in Greece's statistics that show, as she argues, that the control mechanisms of the European Union (Eurostat, the European Court of Auditors) have failed in their mission. 

Marta Andreasen also stresses that at the time when Greece was preparing to enter the eurozone and the European Central Bank expressed concern about the levels of public debt, the open secret in the European Commission and European Parliament was that Eurostat and subsequently then Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs Pedro Solbes, knowing that every vote against the Greek membership in the euroarea should be silenced, because the political desire for expansion and introduction of common currency was very strong. In conclusion, Andreasen concluded that European Union leaders have long placed politics above mathematical facts, and now deeply hypocritically behave towards Greeks as if they are money. 

"New York Times" regarding General Motors and Lehman Brothers 

In another article in "New York Times” Rob Cox and Richard Beales review the collapse of the two American companies General Motors and Lehman Brothers, trying to compare these two cases with the crisis in Greece. Both journalists point out that the way both banks acted out during the bankruptcy brought different results - for Lehman Brothers is was catastrophic, while for General Motors it was manageable. The authors of the article believe that the comparison (with the Greek crisis) cannot be absolute, since Greece is a sovereign state, not a company, but stressed that the economic consequences of the collapse of two U.S. companies could be instructive, indicating that if politicians in Europe want a Greek bankruptcy to end as that of General Motors and not as that of Lehman Brothers, they should prepare. 

They had a lot of time on their hands, say the authors, but unfortunately they did not used it, and now a possible bankruptcy should be done in an organized manner, and even in the case of "cutting" the debt, first needed is a mechanism to strengthen the bank capital and finance, in order to avoid panic in the banking sector, as in the case of Lehman Brothers.