Courtesy of Mish.
Lesson in How to Answer a Question
Christine Lagarde said earlier today that she was “confident” Greece would make tomorrow’s payment to the IMF.
Also today, when Alexis Tsipras was asked by reporters whether the installment would be made, the Greek prime minister replied: “Don’t worry about that.”
That was not a “yes” he simply said “don’t worry about that“, a technical non-answer.
Athens to Delay Payment
Yet moments ago, the Financial Times reported Greece to Delay IMF Repayment as Tsipras Faces Backlash.
Greece has notified the International Monetary Fund that it will not make a scheduled €300m loan repayment on Friday after opposition to a bailout compromise with creditors erupted inside the governing party.
Following a rarely used procedure permitted under IMF rules, the Greek government intends to bundle all the payments it owes in June totalling €1.5bn and transfer it at the end of the month.
“This move is almost unprecedented and based on Tsipras’s comments yesterday unexpected,” said Mujtaba Rahman, head of European analysis at the Eurasia Group risk consultancy. “It unnecessarily raises the stakes and will further undermine the goodwill of Greece’s creditors.”
Ever since an emergency summit meeting of EU leaders hosted Monday in Berlin by Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, eurozone officials have been concerned that many of the terms in a compromise plan hammered out by Greece’s warring creditors would be unacceptable to Syriza.
Some eurozone officials believe Mr Tsipras will be forced to move to elections if he accepts creditors terms, which includes demands that Athens make public-sector pension cuts of 1 per cent annually starting next year. The pension measures, demanded by the IMF but resisted by the European Commission, were one of Athens’ most important “red lines” in negotiations.
In a sign of how fraught the political situation had become for Mr Tsipras, he was forced to put off an expected second round of talks in Brussels with Mr Juncker to address his parliament on Friday night.
Tsipras Cave-In
…
