Greek Debt Talks End Early and Without a Deal

With less than 2 weeks before the current bailout agreement between Greece and the banksters expires, the Greeks have intensified their posturing.

Talks among eurozone finance ministers over a new financing arrangement for Greece broke down abruptly early Monday. The breakdown came after Greece rejected an extension of its current 240-billion-euro ($272 billion) bailout program under the conditions being offered by the ministers.

If the bailout discussions conclude without some kind of new accord in place, the new left wing Greek government will lose access to  bankster funding, leaving it unable to make debt repayments looming in March, and lacking in ability to finance expanded domestic government spending.

Expect a deal to be reached, the lefty, big-spending Greeks need the money. As the Greek poet, Simonides of Ceos (556 – 468 BC) put it, "Not even the gods fight necessity."

Tyler Cowen also makes the sound point:

The further apart the various parties appear to be, the more the whip of concession gets cracking.  The closer to an agreement they may seem, the greater the incentive to play hardball and demand further concessions.  So short-run news reports are hard to interpret, don’t obsess over them.  A given swing very often implies a counter-swing in the opposite direction, even if the latter has not yet made a headline.  So the direction of the last-reported swing just doesn’t contain that much information.

--RW