When global freight transportation collapsed to record lows in July of this year most analysts wrote it off as an anomaly. In September, when one of the largest retail shipping companies in the world warned of weakening global economic conditions and announced they would slash thousands of jobs, financial markets barely even noticed. Last week, Google, the largest small business advertising platform... 

Chart (click to enlarge) And so the tragicomic becomes surreal. Yesterday’s news about the departure of the head of the debt management agency, Spyros Papanicolaou, was somewhat of a yawner, until we realized that his replacement would be none other than Petros Christodoulou, who until today was head of Private Banking and Group Treasury at the National Bank of Greece (reporting directly to the...