Hours Away From Deadline, Greece Swears It Has a Plan

Reuters
Alexander Abad-Santos 517 Views Feb 15, 2012

Today is the day Greece the EU needs to sign off on the paperwork to avoid Greece's default on March 20, and Greece's Finance Minister promises it will have a deal within hours. He has until a 16:00 GMT (11:00 a.m. EST) conference call with his economic bosses to finalize plans that would shore up the €325 million that Europe's economic "troika" (the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund) were initially worried about. And one official told the BBC that Greece had made additional cuts to defense, health and local government budgets to make up for that extra money. 

"There are many in the eurozone who don't want us any more," Evangelos Venizelos said in a BBC report, where he accused euro zone countries of "playing with fire."  Irony aside, it seems that euro zone leaders are looking for insurance in case a deal isn't reached today as The Guardian notes that they're trying to figure out how to delay parts or even all of the bailout program for Greece while avoiding default. 

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