Nostalgia not what it used to be

The Grecian formula was;

The woman who died in a burning Athens bank still smiles at Giorgos Mastorakos on his way to the delicatessen he owns around the corner.

The wreaths and tributes no longer cascade onto the road to mark the spot where she and her two colleagues were killed in violence in May 2010 after the country’s unsustainable debts and ensuing financial decline resulted in the first depression since World War II. At the makeshift memorial that fewer people visit on the anniversary of the deaths, the photo of the woman’s face is framed by an anarchist sign and withering bouquets.

They've gotten beyond all that;

“You could almost say that Greece went through the five stages of grief,” said Andreas Koutras, an adviser at SteppenWolf Capital LLC, an investment company based in Switzerland. “Greeks passed through the initial phases of denial and anger and are now at the depression and acceptance of the inevitable.”Greece was re-designated an emerging market last year for investors, status it had shed when the country headed toward euro membership. Confidence has returned so strongly that during the past month investors favored Greece more than any peer, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Greek bonds returned 309 percent since March 2012, based on the Bloomberg Greece Sovereign Bond Index. Lottery operator Opap SA pays out about 67 percent of its revenue in winnings. As yields tumbled, so did the cost of insuring against the country reneging on its debts. Credit-default swaps, which paid out with the debt restructuring, are the cheapest since 2010.

About all that rioting; nevermind. Now we're North Dakota;

Investor interest in bidding for permits to explore for oil and natural gas off Greece is stronger than expected, Energy Minister Yiannis Maniatis said.

“More than 10 international petroleum companies have expressed interest in the Ionian Sea and south of Crete, which is better than we expected,” Maniatis said in an interview in Athens. “We now know for sure that there are hydrocarbons in Greece and that exploring for them makes economic sense.”