Greece ATM and capital controls update: reasons behind queue

Banks are being flooded by Greeks, mainly pensioners. Greeks remember all too well the 1999 Athens Stock Market crash, when investors lost substantial amounts of their savings, just before Greece joined the Euro.

 

While it’s looking more and more likely that Greece will actually strike a deal with its creditors, after Greece submitted its latest bailout proposal to its European creditors ahead of a midnight deadline on Thursday, people are still panic-queuing at their banks’ ATMS across the country.

 

A report a week ago suggested that the country’s banks had just €500 million (£361 million, $556 million in physical cash left, so people are likely to worry that there is simply not enough cash in the bank to cover all their savings and other deposits.

 

As Business Insider’s Mike Bird pointed out during his visit to Athens last week, the stock of deposits is now less than half of what it was at the peak in 2009, at the end of Greece’s post-euro-entrance boom.

 

“A lot of the money that left the banks in 2010-2012 went out the country,” said Syriza activist Mihalis Panayiotakis, a member of the governing party’s digital-policy committee, to Mike Bird last week. “Also, companies relocated. That money never came back.”

 

Here’s a chart showing the slump in deposits against physical cash in circulation:

 

Read More: Greece ATM and capital controls update: reasons behind queue – Business Insider