GREECE IS DOWN TO THE WIRE
REUTERS/Francois Lenoir
Greek government leaders will meet Sunday to approve the revisions, according to the WSJ:
Government members are putting together a plan they hope would achieve budget targets that bailout creditors want, while relying more on eliminating tax breaks and less on pension cuts than the lenders' own proposal, the officials said.
The Greek cabinet is due to discuss the proposal on Sunday morning. It isn't clear whether the cabinet under Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will endorse the plan, which was being prepared on the weekend by Deputy Prime Minister Yannis Dragasakis and others who are considered among the more pragmatic members of the leftist Syriza-led government.
Monday's meeting with Greece's troika of creditors, the European Commission, the IMF, and the ECB, will be crucial. The group has thus far refused a litany of previous proposals for reform from Greece's government officials.
The ECB had to grant Greek banks emergency liquidity over the weekend to make sure that they will be able to open Monday, and Bloomberg reports that this is a "weekend of fear in Greece."
In an op-ed in the Irish Times Saturday morning, an obviously frustrated Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis wrote that so far, eurogroup negotiations have proved to be "a strange forum, one ill-equipped to forge good, hard decisions when Europe truly needs them."
In another weekend op-ed, this one in the Financial Times, economist Larry Summers wrote that without a deal, Greece might become a failed state - although at least one critic suggested that Summers' argument might be a bit hyperbolic.
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