Released on: November 6, 2007, 8:40 am

Press Release Author: NewsNow

Industry: Financial

Press Release Summary: This week\'s Economist includes a new survey on the political
and financial outlook for Greece. A fair analysis of the current situation in Greece
for non-Greeks, and an interesting view point for natives.

Press Release Body: Stand on the penthouse roof of a warehouse in downtown Athens,
recently transformed into a contemporary art gallery, and your senses will be
assaulted by the feverish energy and wild contradictions of modern Greece at the
start of its third century of existence. Among the nearby buildings on Sophocleous
Street are some handsome neo-classical mansions which now house Greece\'s new class
of investment bankers, stock analysts and bond traders. Also within view are
edifices of similar style and vintage that are quietly decaying, their wooden
shutters flapping in the breeze. Such buildings are often owned by quarrelsome
extended families who find it cheaper to let their properties deteriorate than to
comply with a government preservation order.

The horizon is still dominated by the Parthenon, newly endowed with splendid night
lights and soon to be linked with the other antiquities of Athens in a
four-kilometre-long archaeological park, as part of the city\'s preparations to
display its old and new charms during the 2004 Olympics. But in the foreground there
is a maze of narrow streets where exquisite Byzantine churches jostle for space with
hundreds of tiny family businesses: spice merchants, icon-painting workshops and
purveyors of mournful music brought by Greek refugees from Turkey. The pungent scent
of the meat market, a favourite spot with nocturnal revellers, wafts upwards. .

Web Site: http://

Contact Details: Athens
Greece