Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, said that he would regret but respect if a country would leave the euro-zone.
This isn’t the firm commitment to keep Greece in the euro-zone, heard usually from his boss Angela Merkel. This statement follows previous musings about Greece being a “bottomless pit” and follow many actions that push Greece to declare its bankruptcy.
38 requirements were listed by the troika for Greece as “prior actions” to receiving a bailout. The original deadline was the end of the month, which is tomorrow. Greece wishes to complete the bond swap (or debt restructuring / haircut) by March 8th
Greek deadlines are not holy. The only real deadline is March 27th. That’s one week after Greece’s 7 day grace period. The debt struck country needs to redeem over 14 billion euros of bonds on March 20th.
For more about the Greek endgame, see the detailed report. You can download it by joining the newsletter in the form below.
In other news, US durable goods orders plunged by 4%, much worse than a drop of 0.8% that was expected. A sharp drop was also seen in core orders.
EUR/USD remain stable at 1.3440. Is this a calm before the storm? For more on the pair, see the euro to dollar forecast.