greece has a checkered history when it
comes to repaying its debts defaults
span the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries peaking with last year's shock
failure to pay back the IMF on time
thanks to the current crisis it's been
18 months since Greece was last able to
sell bonds on international capital
markets but if the Prime Minister has
his way investors won't have to wait too
much longer for new issuance after two
elections a referendum and fretful
negotiations with predators to secure a
new bailout and avoid leaving the euro
Greece is hoping to restart sales of
sovereign bonds within the next 18
months then again debt sales in Greece
have never really dried up on Tuesday
Athens sold over 1.6 billion euros of
six-month t-bills to refinance maturing
debt at a rate of two point nine seven
percent the exact yield that it's sold
debt at since March 2015 buyers of this
debt tend to be Greek banks which are
not really buying new debt but renewing
positions but in the wider Greek debt
market there's evidence that other sorts
of buyers have started to reappear once
again last year was by any measure a
problem for investors in Greece the
athens stock exchange was down over
twenty-five percent over the year and
while Greek bonds may have been one of
the better performance in the region
they suffered months of painful
volatility prices for Greek debt due to
mature in 2019 drop to 60 cents in the
euro and bankers at Morgan Stanley
started to talk about the idea that if
Greece was forced to exit the euro the
bonds could be worth as little as four
cents in the euro but prices for those
same bonds are now 90 cents in the euro
which might suggest a cheerful outlook
for investors if it were not for the
fact that the yield remains far higher
than any other in the region aware that
the economy is frail and changes
demanded by creditors will be highly
unpopular bond investors are hoping that
the ECB will one day include greek debt
in its QE program but this is by no
means a done deal because of the bonds
junk rating the ECB needs to introduce a
waiver which it shown little enthusiasm
for doing in recent months
but if you think Greece's feature is at
the heart of the eurozone there could be
plenty of room for prices to keep on
rising