It has been a bad week for the Greek finance minister: first, under pressure from Europe, Tsipras was forced to sideline the “combatied” Varoufakis from future Troika negotiations, then his wife had to protect him from an attack by “young anarchists”, and now – adding insult to injury – an anonymous Greek government official as well as EU sources told AFP, Bloomberg and Reuters that, without Varoufakis present, Greece and its creditors have made “significant progress” and that there were “encouraging” signs from meetings over the weekend.
As a reminder, Greece is so desperate to get access to any money, last week its pensioners crashed a pension fund board meeting and formed long lines outside domestic banks demanding access to their cash which as delayed due to a “technical glitch.”
But the far bigger problem is that in the coming three months Greece will need to make billions in interest and maturity payments to Europe.
Which is why having shown Varoufakis who is boss, Europe is now once again in generous mood and will likely give Greece just enough cash with which Greece can repay what it owes to, well, Europe.
According to AFP, the talks, which began Thursday, were the first led by economist and junior foreign minister Euclid Tsakalotos, who last week replaced the controversial Varoufakis as head of Greece’s team of negotiators.
After months of acrimonious deadlock, “the revamped (Greek) Brussels group have clearly improved the process, with a clear schedule for the discussions… and with more experts present with more details,” one source said.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on 05/03/2015.
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