The Financial Times – What is the difference between a rollover, reprofiling and restructuring?

Reality and Satire on a Collision Course

The Dismal Political Economist commented some time ago about how the problem of solving the Greek fiscal and debt crisis was a matter of finding the right words to describe a Greek default without calling it a Greek default.  We said

"The Dismal Political Economist is just so pleased that the ECB came up with the right words to allow a restructuring of Greek debt without calling it a restructuring.  Clever folks, those semanticists at the ECB."

Now the Financial Times under a headline that says

Semantics Cloud Greek Debt Crisis

Reports that

The unseemly public discussion this week on the way forward in the eurozone debt crisis has seemed like a bad capital markets joke. Only for investors it is not funny.

 “We are getting to the point where the whole game is too silly,” Willem Buiter, Citi’s chief economist, says of the different words used to mean essentially the same thing: a restructuring of Greece’s debt

If the intrusion of actual events into the world of satire and sarcasm continues, The Dismal Political Economist will consider litigation.  Reality, you have been warned.