Greece on the brink of breaking with its creditors – BBC

Europeans and Americans urge Athens to finally present its budgetary measures program.

With a GDP of 250 billion dollar, Greece weighs less than 0.3% of the global economy. But this grain of sand was a grain of salt that has given all his taste for “spring meetings” of the IMF and the World Bank, Friday and Saturday. Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek Finance Minister – more stocky than the tabloids for his counterparts discovering firsthand – as was the star

Christine Lagarde, Mario Draghi, Jack Lew, the secretary. US Treasury have been alone together. It was to be told by the owner that the IMF was imperative to honor refunds, one billion euros from May “A payment period would amount to an additional funding made and the IMF has never granted for thirty years,” it is justified.

The President of the ECB has shown any as firm: “It takes a lot more work and it’s urgent,” he began, speaking directly to the Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. “We must have a comprehensive and costed program on the impact of the reforms,” ​​said Draghi

If the IMF is obliged to respect its own rules. – A lack of reimbursement would amount to failure vis-a -vis the 188 countries shareholders of the Fund – the ECB is in a position less tenable. As explained Christian Noyer, Governor of the Bank of France, cash advances to Greek banks and the economy amounted to 110 billion euros by the Eurosystem. A huge amount and expanding, which should make a cross if Athens were to default and out of the euro. One not without the other.

The assumption of a “Grexit” has been repeatedly raised in Washington, always with a response in three stages, as summarized José Vinals, the financial advisor of the IMF: “The terrible consequences for Greece; a shock to the euro area, but it has strengthened its institutional framework in recent years; . and term incentives to deepen fiscal union and move towards a political union “

Meanwhile, Mario Draghi said” do not even think about it “: we would sail” in uncharted waters. ” But nevertheless stresses that “we are better equipped than in 2010 or 2012,” to curb contagion. It refers to the measures taken since then, including the recent quantitative easing (QE), which has restored the image of the euro area.

That would be hollow, “the plan” a “Grexit “no Apocalypse. And he would intervene only after a referendum or early elections, if one believes Yannis Dragasakis, Deputy Prime Minister of Greece, who spoke this weekend in Athens. As for Jack Lew, Treasury Secretary, he admits that “the European and global economies do not need to have another crisis.” In the field, that is to say, to Paris where meet in OECD premises, with the Greeks, the negotiators of the former troika (IMF, EU, ECB), the negotiations have just resume . To reach a new global program, “it clearly still take several weeks of discussions,” warned Poul Thomsen, head of the IMF management Europe, having flown in 2010 and 2011 the two planes bailout for Greece (110 and 139 billion euros, respectively).

Already, it is accepted that the Eurogroup of finance ministers, which is found in Riga on 24 April, will reach a political agreement fault for technicians to have found martingale.