I am quite skeptical on the numbers circulating on shipping and tourism contribution to Greek GDP. These number are numbers by their respective lobbies so they tend to be inflated (for example, by including a broad area of services to "tourism").

"[W]hen you add up the growth prognosis of all companies of a sector strangely the market is often a lot bigger than it should be..."

- crankykarsten

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

I'd really like to know about the Greek banks and the fact they were started by shipping magnates. What's the relationship between these banks and the shippers who started them. What kind of impact does this have on Greece? It seems to me, should the world economy get going again, the shippers themselves can recapitalize banks in a similar fashion if the old ones collapse, as long as their wealth isn't too closely tied to the banks they created.