Courtesy of Mish.
Eurozone watchers have said 11th hour so many times that no one believes it any more. To place new emphasis on the plight of Greece it’s now allegedly 1 minute to midnight.
Given that Greek funds were supposed to last until April 30, there’s plenty of time for 30 seconds to midnight, 20 seconds to midnight, then a countdown to Cinderella hour when Greece may finally turn into a pumpkin.
Brussels Threatens Capital Controls
Meanwhile, with a countdown underway, please consider Athens Raids Public Health Coffers in Hunt for Cash.
Greece’s government has raided the coffers of its public health service and the Athens metro as it widens a hunt for funds to keep itself afloat and service debts.
Athens faces a €1.7bn bill for wages and pensions at the end of the month and then a €450m loan payment to the International Monetary Fund on April 9. Greek government and eurozone officials believe Athens does not have funds to cover both.
In another constraint on Greece’s ability to raise cash, the European Central Bank decided to impose stricter curbs on the issuance of short-term government debt.
EU officials expressed hope that a marathon Monday night meeting between Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, and his German counterpart, chancellor Angela Merkel, would spark long-stalled talks over economic reforms Greece must implement to unlock €7.2bn in frozen bailout aid.
In the absence of progress, some EU officials were accelerating their preparations in case Athens runs out of cash before it agrees a reform programme. In Brussels, European Commission officials have begun looking again at EU law governing capital controls in case the growing uncertainty, or a non-payment to the IMF, spurs a renewed run on bank deposits.
In Frankfurt, the ECB informed Greece’s biggest banks that it was making legally binding the ceiling it imposed last month on their holdings of short-term Treasury bills.
Such a move will limit the Eurosystem’s exposure to the Greek government should it fail to pay its debts. But it will also close off another source of financing on which Athens had been relying.
Greek banks hold about €11bn in Greek T-bills, and Athens must roll over two T-bills totalling €2.4bn in mid-April….
