[paganel]

There's a thing I do not understand, nominally speaking French banks' exposure to Greek debt is not that large. I have not a easy link as reference, but I seem to remember reading in some of last week's FT editions that BNP Paribas had the highest exposure, with ~4 billion euros, followed by Societe Generale, with 2 or 3 billion. Of course that to you and me it looks like a lot of money, but the Kerviel case alone cost SG almost 5 billion euro in direct losses (not counting the losses incurred by the case on the share price), so Greece going down (or taking a 50% cut) shouldn't be that much of a tragedy, at least in theory.

Now, why then all this panic? It could because of what you said ("spread rumors, accumulate riches"), or because there's a hidden iceberg somewhere in these muddy waters: maybe countries like Italy and France are much closer to collapse than people think.

[patd]

Maybe it's because other countries could follow the same path. Greece isn't that big but if the other PIIGS fail to pay, it could be much more than a few billions.