Greece Is In Trouble Again: Bonds, Stocks Plunge As Bailout Talks Collapse; IMF Sees “Explosive” Debt
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Jan 27, 2017
It may – or may not – shock readers to learn that Greece is once again on the verge of collapse.
10-year bond yields shot up and stocks tumbled on Friday, a day after euro zone finance ministers acknowledged the country’s fiscal progress but once again failed to break an impasse with the IMF over the country’s future bailout targets. Early on Friday morning, the greatest Greek nemesis alive, and surely in the afterlife, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said that Greece’s creditors won’t unlock further financial aid to the country unless the government meets its reform promises, which he said it hasn’t done yet.
Two years after its third bailout, Athens and the Troika, or is that Quadriga, i.e., its European and IMF creditors, are still at odds over the fiscal goals Greece can achieve after 2018, when its third rescue programme ends. According to Reuters, the talks have dragged on for months, hindering the conclusion of a bailout review that would help Athens qualify for inclusion in the ECB’s much desied bond-monetization programme and return to bond markets as early as this year.
And, yes, the ongoing disagreements have rekindled fears of a new crisis in Greece, which never really emerged from any of the previous ones, which was forced to sign up to another bailout in July 2015 in order to stay in the euro zone.
Worse, hinting that there may not be a 4th bailout simply because the Greek people will snap by then, the Greek parliament’s budgetary office warned on Friday that “the fiscal cost of the delays may prove bigger than the benefit of a deal”.
Greek 10-year bond yields rose by 21 basis points on Friday, while stocks were 3 percent down. Which means that in the Greek market where an occasional trade takes place once a week, someone sold an oddlot.
The Rest…HERE
