As default looms, Greece seeks to escape key July payments to ECB

Jon Banking, Economy, Market Commentary

As the country lurches closer to default, Yannis Varoufakis, the country’s flamboyant and polarizing finance minister, broke one of the key taboos over its debt crisis Thursday, calling for the rescheduling of two big debt repayments in July.
On July 20, Greece has to redeem bonds worth €3.46 billion ($3.95 billion), currently held by the European Central Bank. Within a month of that, it faces another similar redemption of €3.19 billion.
Increasingly desperate ad hoc measures have allowed it so far to meet all its obligations to its creditors–the country had to raid the cash reserves of public-sector organizations and even its own IMF holding account to meet a €775 million payment to the Fund earlier this week.
But the July repayments are of a different order of magnitude.

This post was published at Fortune