Courtesy of Mish.
The inevitable in Greece gets closer and closer. Looking back, I wonder how many rabbits in the hat there were. More importantly, how many still remain?
I believe the answer to the latter question is zero.
Yet, I also point out the propensity of German chancellor Angela Merkel to prolong the "not on my watch" inevitable. Meanwhile, the pot has is far more advanced than "simmering".
Greece Boils Over
The Financial Times reports EU Frustration Over Greece Boils Over at Eurogroup Meeting.
Months of mounting tensions between Greece and its creditors boiled over at a high-level EU meeting on Friday with eurozone finance ministers angrily accusing their Greek counterpart of backtracking on commitments and failing to grasp the deep differences that still divide them.
Athens is running desperately short of cash and many eurozone officials fear that, without an agreement to release some of the remaining €7.2bn in its bailout programme, the government could default as early as mid-May.
Eurozone officials briefed on the closed-door, three-hour meeting said Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek finance minister, specifically warned that cash was so tight that government coffers might run dry in a matter of weeks.
The antagonism between Mr Varoufakis and other ministers became so severe during the eurogroup session that Slovenia’s finance minister suggested if bailout talks did not progress more quickly the eurozone should prepare a “Plan B” to deal with a Greek default.
The contentious session undermined claims by Greek officials that a Thursday meeting in Brussels between Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, and Angela Merkel, his German counterpart, had narrowed the differences. The claims briefly sent the euro rallying in morning trading, but those gains evaporated after news of the differences emerged.
Default Necessary but Grexit Not?
Financial Times writer Wolfgang Münchau says Default Necessary but Grexit Not.
Until last week, discussions with Greece did not go well. That changed when the circus of international financial diplomacy moved to Washington for the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Then it became worse.
My hunch is that this show will go on for quite a while. The Greeks want to merge the talks on the extension of the current, second, loan programme with the talks on the new third one. For that to work they will require temporary bridging finance to get through the summer. This sounds like somebody has a plan. But this is not my impression. I have never seen European finance officials so much at a loss.
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