Wednesday, March 25, 2015

This is What Government Desperation Looks Like: Athens Raids Public Health Coffers in Hunt for Cash

In a sign that the cash crunch has become more desperate in Greece, officials, at the state healthcare service, were asked on Tuesday to hand over a €50m reserve for paying arrears owed to medical workers, reports FT.

Despite the money grab, the government remains on the edge of financial collapse.

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 banks hold about €11bn in Greek T-bills, and Athens must roll over two T-bills totalling €2.4bn in mid-April.

Greek banks have been the primary buyers of government debt and have essentially rolled over their existing holdings during recent T-bill auctions. But at least 20 per cent of the April 14 bill is held by investors outside Greece who are unlikely to roll over their holdings, according to FT, and Greek banks are now barred by the Eurozone regulations from buying up the difference.

“The Greeks are one minute away from midnight,” said Mujtaba Rahman, head of European analysis at the Eurasia Group consultancy, reports FT. “The government is at the edge of the precipice and may well go over.”

 -RW

3 comments:

  1. Haven't we been here several times already?

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    Replies
    1. the trainwreck makes several stops it seems

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  2. I guess they should have called it a consulting fee?....Fed's Stein Inks Consulting Gig with BlueMountain Mar 24 2015


    Jeremy Stein, a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve from 2012 to 2014, has joined BlueMoutain Capital Management as a consultant.

    Stein, who is also a professor of economics at Harvard, will reportedly work with the hedge fund on how matters pertaining to government policy, regulation, and risk will impact investment strategy.

    Stein has consulted with hedge funds before, working with Guggenheim Partners between 2005 and 2007, according to Harvard disclosures. In 2009, he served as a senior advisor to the U.S. Treasury Secretary and was on the National Economic Council.

    BlueMountain, founded in 2003 and managed by Andrew Feldstein, has more than $20 billion in assets under management. The fund is known as a credit specialist and famously profited from the 2012 London Whale trading fiasco.

    http://www.finalternatives.com/node/30328


    ReplyDelete