If, like us, you assumed that Greece’s move to effectively take out a loan from the IMF to pay back a previous IMF loan represented peak absurdity in the increasingly tense standoff between Athens and its creditors you would have been wrong because as you can see from the below, an engraver from the Bank of Greece has just won a contest to design a €2 commemorative coin.
From the EU:
This is the fourth time the euro-area members have decided to collectively issue a commemorative coin:
The first was in 2007 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, the second time was in 2009 when sixteen countries commemorated 10 years of the EMU and the third time in 2012 to mark 10 years of euro cash.
A professional jury selected five coin designs among the 62 designs submitted by Euro area mints.
Euro-area citizens and residents were invited to select the winning design by public web-voting until 27 May 2015.
The winning design, with 30% of the online vote, was by the hand of Georgios Stamatopoulos from the Bank Of Greece.
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So a big congratulations to Mr. Stamatopoulos.
The only question now, is whether he will be designing drachma by the time the new coin is issued later this year.