BlackRock Ranks Greece As Dead, Says Is At Risk of Sovereign Default

Greece has once again been ranked dead last Sovereign Risk Index produced by the Blackrock Investment Institute, coming behind countries including Argentina, Ukraine, Egypt and Venezuela.

The index for the second quarter of 2014 was released a few days ago. According to the firm the BlackRock Sovereign Risk Index (BSRI):

“Breaks down the data into four main categories that each count toward a country’s final BSRI score and ranking: Fiscal Space (40%), Willingness to Pay (30%), External Finance Position (20%) and Financial Sector Health (10%).

• Fiscal Space includes metrics such as debt to gross domestic product (GDP) and the debt’s term structure.
• Willingness to Pay measures a government’s perceived effectiveness and stability (as well as perceived corruption).
• External Finance Position includes exposure to foreign currency debt and the current account balance.
• Financial Sector Health gauges the banking system’s strength.

Needless to say on all fronts Greece achieved a negative score.

Of course Greece was not the only eurozone country near the bottom, with Portugal Italy and Ireland all in the bottom ten while Spain eked its way up to number 38. The bottom of the table overall looked like this:

41 Ireland
42 Hungary
43 Slovenia
44 Italy
45 Argentina
46 Portugal
47 Ukraine
48 Egypt
49 Venezuela
50 Greece

While it is not the first time that Greece has been at the bottom of the table, the fact that countries such as Egypt and Ukraine with their domestic strife are still considered less likely to default than Greece indicates that the country’s bailout program has yet to convince many that it is achieving its aims.

The table in full:

Photos and article PressProject