Most of officialdom has been referring to the second Greek bailout, formally launched today, as a €130bn rescue. But the first 189-page report by European Union and International Monetary Fund monitors makes clear it’s actually a lot larger, though the actual size depends on how your measure it.

In the latest in our occasional series “We Read Brick-Sized Bailout Reports So You Don’t Have To”, Brussels Blog will attempt to explain why the figures have gotten so confusing and the bailout is probably better described as a €164.5bn rescue. Or maybe it’s €173.6bn.

The key thing to remember is that the first €110bn Greek bailout was originally supposed to run through the middle of next year and its remainnig funding will be folded into the new package and added to the €130bn in new funding. According to the report, €73bn of the first bailout has been disbursed, leaving about €37bn left.

But here’s where it gets slightly complicated.

Ad appeared in the FT, International Herald Tribune, and Wall Street Journal's European edition

[UPDATE] The German version of the ad can be seen here via Twitter (thanks to blogger @TeraEuro for the link). It was in the mass-market daily Bild. And here’s the French version via Le Figaro (h/t @hbeaudouin).

With just days to go ahead of an expected Thursday meeting of eurozone finance ministers where they will finally give the green light to Greece’s €130bn second bail-out, a group of Greek businessmen has taken out advertisements in a wide range of international newspapers to plead their country’s case.

According to a spokesman for the group, which calls itself “Greece is Changing”, the ads were rushed into print by a group of like-minded business leaders and designed by Peter Economides, the acclaimed marketing strategist who, among other things, helped develop the “Think Different” campaign for Apple in 1997.

Economides, born in South Africa of Greek émigrés, has been on a campaign to get Greece to “rebrand” itself for months, and the ads ran in three English-language newspapers – the FT, International Herald Tribune and the Wall Street Journal’s European edition – as well as German, French and Dutch papers. (Dutch blogger Michiel van Hulten posted the version that ran in NRC Handelsblad here.)

Greece's Lucas Papademos, flanked by Greek and French finance ministers, at Monday's meeting.

The 10-page Greek debt sustainability report that we obtained Monday night is filled with very sobering conclusions that we highlighted in our news story that’s now up on the web.

But the document – prepared by analysts in the so-called “troika” of international lenders, the European Central Bank, European Commission, and International Monetary Fund – is filled with so much interesting data, that we thought we’d give it further airing here at the Brussels Blog.

The report, marked “strictly confidential” and dated February 15, starts with a page-long summary that includes arguably the most revealing paragraph in the entire document: