New Times,
New Thinking.

  1. Business
  2. Economics
16 May 2012updated 04 Oct 2023 10:04am

Who’s to blame for “Grexit”?

Not the phenomenon; the word.

By Alex Hern

“Grexit” has gone from being a word that no-one had heard, to one that people couldn’t quite believe they had heard, to one that people can’t stop hearing, in a very short space of time.

Google Insights shows the search volume for the word over the last twelve months (the scale is searches, normalised so that the highest month is equal to 100):

As you can see, it was first heard in February, has a local maximum in March, and then rocketed up this month (it is likely to rise even higher in the last third of May). So where did it come from? Who do we have to blame?

It’s all Citigroup’s fault. On 7 February, Willem Buiter and Ebrahim Rahbari at Citi released a briefing note that read:

Select and enter your email address Your weekly guide to the best writing on ideas, politics, books and culture every Saturday. The best way to sign up for The Saturday Read is via saturdayread.substack.com The New Statesman's quick and essential guide to the news and politics of the day. The best way to sign up for Morning Call is via morningcall.substack.com
Visit our privacy Policy for more information about our services, how Progressive Media Investments may use, process and share your personal data, including information on your rights in respect of your personal data and how you can unsubscribe from future marketing communications.
THANK YOU

We raise our estimate of the likelihood of Greek exit from the eurozone (or ‘Grexit’) to 50 per cent over the next 18 months from earlier estimates of ours which put it at 25-30 per cent.

For the record, on 7 May Citi cranked up its odds of a Grexit to 50-75 per cent. If they are better at making medium-term predictions than they  are at coining words that don’t sound like an antidepressant, there is still time to short the Euro.

Content from our partners
Why Rachel Reeves needs to focus on food in schools
No health, no growth
Tackling cancer waiting times