Greece needs Brady bonds

[Recursion]

Greece looks more and more to me like the Latin American countries in the 80s that were pegged to the dollar in a damaging way.

Roughly, these were dollar-denominated bonds for countries moving off the dollar that were backed by limited equity claims against national assets, which made them more attractive to commercial lenders. The US Treasury issued special bonds that the LA countries could buy with IMF money; these bonds were held in escrow and used as equity collateral for the commercial market.

To put it simply, the countries were given a stash of dollars that they could only use to secure credit while they moved their economies off the dollar and got their own currencies up and running.

Germany could do something like this for Greece tomorrow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brady_Bonds

[geek tragedy]

1. This would require them working together, however.

It's looking likely that the least two attractive options--turbo austerity or unmanaged Grexit--are the only ones physically possible.