“Another extended deadline? European leaders have given Greece 48 hours to make the final push needed to satisfy creditors and end a five-month standoff over aid that risks splitting the euro.
Expectations for a deal climbed sharply yesterday after Athens submitted a set of reform measures that began to converge with the terms demanded by creditors.
Leaders now hope to sign off on an agreement by the end of the week, just days before the cash-starved country must repay €1.6B to the IMF,” Seeking Alpha reports.
However this Greek drama plays out, there will be an inevitable and harsh adjustment
Greece and its creditors – the so-called troika of the EU, ECB and IMF – have been engaged in a long game of chicken this spring about the conditions for refinancing its debt. While pundits continue to speculate about deadlines and tactics, at the end of the day Greece has only two real choices:
1. Stay within the euro zone – by negotiating and accepting general conditions of its main creditors; or
2. Default on its debt payments and choose to exit the euro zone.
Both options are costly – there is no easy way out, despite Greek PM Tsipras’s recent visit to Moscow and implied threats of moving closer to Russia.
Note that there are other Greece links, via NATO and the EU in general, beyond the monetary link of the euro. A Greek exit…
View original post 630 more words
Discussion
No comments yet.