Germany rejects request for extension of current bailout

Global Business

Greece and its Eurozone creditors meet again Friday for another round of tough talks. Germany flatly rejected an official request by Athens for an extension of Greece’s current bailout repayment. CCTV’s Jack Barton filed this report from Brussels.

Greece’s $273 billion bailout ends in little more than a week and without another loan it will leave Athens completely cut off from financing and its banks at risk of collapse.

“President Juncker, who was in intense talks with president Dijsselbloem and President Tsipras who were in talks through the night, sees in his assessment this paves the way for a reasonable compromise,” said Margaritis Schinas, spokesman for the European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker.

Berlin predictably soured the mood, rejecting the request by Athens for an extension because allegedly it containing too little commitment to austerity.

“It’s definitely the Greeks who have given in the most so far, but on the opposite side of the negotiation table the Germans still reject more leeway into the conditional,” said economist Anthony Baert.

Baert went on to describe the worst case scenario here.

“Both sides stick to their position as it is today, no compromise is found in the coming days and that means the ECB will not push up the ceiling any more for emergency liquidity assistance to Greek banks, that the Greek government doesn’t have funding anymore and hence Greece would have to default and leave the Eurozone. That is the worst case scenario,” said Baert.

Nervous Greeks are reportedly withdrawing the equivalent of two point three billion dollars a week from the country’s banks, which could be empty by March.


Paulo Mauro discusses Greece’s debt crisis

CCTV America interviewed Paulo Mauro, Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics on Greece’s debt crisis.