Greece sets up cash crunch for March

[Jolly Roger]

Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said Greece won’t seek an extension of its bailout agreement, setting the government on course to enter March without a financial backstop for the first time in five years.

Greece won’t engage with officials from the troika of official creditors who have been policing the conditions of its rescue since 2010. It’s five-day-old government wants a new deal with the European Union that allows for more spending, Varoufakis said at a joint press conference with Eurogroup Chief Jeroen Dijsselbloem in Athens, Friday.

“We don’t plan to cooperate with that committee,” Varoufakis said. “The Greek state has a future, but what we won’t accept has a future is the self-perpetuating crisis of deflation and unsustainable debt.”

The standoff could see Greek banks effectively excluded from European Central Bank liquidity operations and the government with no source of funding, having rejected EU aid while still shut out of international markets.

'Not bluffing'

“These people are not bluffing,” Theodore Pelagidis, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said by phone. “There is no way that Greece will make it through February. The situation will get worse every day, and at the forefront of the drama will be the country’s banks.”

http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite1_1_30/01/2015_546707

[Bryan-in-Kilkis]

Could Greece's next currency possibly be the rouble?   

[TonyKath]

Would that be the (t)rouble Bryan?!  I still think there are billions of New Drachmas printed in 2010 hidden in a cave somewhere in the mountains of Zagori.  One billion will of course not get you much more than a coffee. 

It will certainly be very interesting to watch.  Bets accepted in GBP only!

Tony

[Jolly Roger]

Would that be the (t)rouble Bryan?!  I still think there are billions of New Drachmas printed in 2010 hidden in a cave somewhere in the mountains of Zagori.  One billion will of course not get you much more than a coffee. 

It will certainly be very interesting to watch.  Bets accepted in GBP only!

Tony

Zagori being in North West Greece. The rumour I heard was from a 'well informed source (a bank official)' in Crete, that in 2010 there had been a delivery of Drachmas, to be held in the vaults.