Greece and its creditors fail to reach agreement - Rabobank

Michael Every, Senior Asia-Pacific Strategist at Rabobank, explains that in Europe, yesterday we saw marathon 7-hour talks between Greece and its creditors fail to reach agreement even though Athens has introduced yet more austerity.

Key Quotes

“The nitty-gritty, it seems, are over what economic forecasts past 2018 look like: Greece is projecting optimistic budget performances, and the Eurogroup are even more ambitious, while the IMF seems to be the only one who has looked at the track-record of both austerity and economic forecasting (for once) and realised it might be better to err on the safe side – which then requires more debt relief, something that is unpalatable within Europe’s current gold standard monetary system. Expect the negotiation can to be kicked to June, when all can then agree to extend and pretend that 2019 onwards holds nothing but milk and honey for Greece.”