The Fat Lady ain't singing,

But she sure is warming up

Georgios Provopoulos, the governor of the central bank of Greece, is a man of statistics, and they speak a clear language. "In September and October, savings and time deposits fell by a further 13 to 14 billion euros. In the first 10 days of November the decline continued on a large scale," he recently told the economic affairs committee of the Greek parliament.

With disarming honesty, the central banker explained to the lawmakers why the Greek economy isn't managing to recover from a recession that has gone on for three years now: "Our banking system lacks the scope to finance growth."

Essentially, the Greeks don't trust their banking system to be there in the near future, so they are taking their money out of the banks and either moving it to other countries or stuffing their mattresses. The same thing happened not to long ago in Germany and we know how that turned out. The Euro-coin/Union canary may not be dead yet, but it is sure gasping for breath.