Once It's Gone...

Greece might want to... have to... institute capital controls before it's too late.

Money has been fleeing Greece ever since the country’s debt crisis began more than two and a half years ago. But the outflow has picked up velocity since last week’s election, when the elevation of anti-austerity leftist parties in Parliament raised the specter in international financial markets of a Greek default. At a time when Greek’s banking system needs all the help it can get from the rest of Europe, its own depositors are making the banks weaker by the day.

An average of 4 billion euros, or $5.1 billion, has flowed out of Greece every month since 2009, when the European debt crisis first broke open.