For Finland this is mainly a domestic political campaign. Finnish voters are turning anti-euro and the government had to do something in order to win some votes back. For Greece, guaranteeing collateral was one way of securing the votes of all countries, including Finland.
Other countries in the eurozone though are (rightfully so) upset because if one country gets collateral, why shouldn't others? This would eventually lead to a situation where all the money borrowed to Greece would be deposited somewhere as collateral and there would be no money left for Greece to cover its costs. Is there any solution for this?
Seeking collateral for the money borrowed to Greece would be a good idea since this would discipline Greece as well. What could be used as a collateral though? One possibility could be natural resources. In 1992 my home country Estonia successfully carried out a monetary reform which substituted Russian ruble with Estonian krona. Estonia initially used our national forest and gold reserves as collateral for the krona. So let's look at Greece's natural resources and other reserves (from CIA World Fact Book):
- 991 million cubic meters of natural gas with a market value of around 138 billion USD (Bloomberg)
- 6,37 billion USD in gold reserves
- 10 million barrels of oil with a market value of around with a market value of around 1,1 billion USD (Bloomberg)
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