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Business Daily: Sharing the Greek debt burden

07/07/2011

Sharing the Greek debt burden

BBC World Service - Business Daily, Sharing the Greek debt burden

What will the private institutions who lent money to Greece do to help the country now?

What will the private institutions who lent money to Greece do to help the country now? And, is a social entrepreneur an oxymoron? Plus, why nostalgia is so now.

As money is poured into Greece to ward off the risk of default the big debate is who should pick up the tab. And the key question is how much of a hit the private banks and institutions that lent money to Greece during the good times should take.  

The French proposal that private banks roll over Greece's debts - essentially re-lend most of the money - has proved very controversial. Our Paris Correspondent Christian Fraser has been at a key meeting in the city and interviews Charles Dallara of the International Institute of Finance.

Plus, just like a "new classic", a "false truth" or a "miniature giant" the term "social entrepreneur" has always sounded like a contradiction in terms. Surely you are either in it for the money - an entrepreneur - or you are trying to do good - the social bit. You can't really be both at the same time.  

Indeed, cynics would say that businesses that make the claim are really using the social aims as cover to make themselves even more cash. So is that fair? 

Justin Rowlatt interviews Rupert Scofield, a man who claims to be a social entrepreneur. Over the last 40 years he's built up a microfinance business called Finca with three quarters of a million clients and a loan book of $300m and now he's written a book about it.

And finally we induldge in a bit of nostalgia because it is a fact in business that nostalgia sells.  

A case in point is the modern PC that was released a few months ago that looked and felt exactly like a 1980s computing classic - the Commodore 64. Delighting geeks the world over, this is just one example of a big trend in business, to reinvent the past, rather than come up with new ideas for the 21st Century.  

But, as the broadcaster and comedian Yasmeen Khan, has been discovering - wait for it - nostalgia ain't what it used to be.

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