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Continue Reading: Greece Empties IMF Reserve Account to Pay IMF; Liquidity "Terribly Urgent" Says Finance Minister
The Wall Street Journal reports IMF Works With Greece’s Neighbors to Contain Default Risks . The International Monetary Fund is working with national authorities in southeastern Europe on contingency plans for a Greek default, a senior fund official said—a rare public admission that regulators are preparing for the potential failure to agree on continued aid for Athens. Greek banks are big players in some of its neighbors’ financial systems.
Meanwhile, please consider Tsipras Reshuffles Negotiating Team to Sideline Varoufakis . Greece’s outspoken finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has been sidelined after three months of fruitless talks with international creditors to unlock €7.2bn in bailout funds, heartening investors and sparking a rally on the Athens stock market. Eurozone officials said they were encouraged by the move by Alexis Tsipras, Greece’s prime minister, to overhaul his bailout negotiating team in the wake of an acrimonious meeting of eurozone finance ministers in Riga last week
Sure enough, Reuters reports Greece Says Ready to Make IMF Payment on April 9 Greece will repay a loan tranche to the IMF on time on April 9, its deputy finance minister said on Friday, seeking to quell fears of default after a flurry of contradictory statements on the issue in recent days. Greece is fast running out of cash and its euro zone and International Monetary Fund lenders have frozen bailout aid until the new leftist-led government reaches agreement on a package of reforms. That prompted the interior minister to suggest this week that Athens would prioritize wages and pensions over the roughly 450 million euro ($490 million) payment to the IMF, though the government denied that was its stance
Bloomberg reports Shanghai Traders Make Trillion-Yuan Stock Bet With Borrowed Cash . Shanghai traders now have more than 1 trillion yuan ($161 billion) of borrowed cash riding on the world’s highest-flying stock market.
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Reuters reports Austria Imposes Debt Moratorium on Heta "Bad Bank" Austria’s Financial Market Authority stepped in on Sunday to wind down "bad bank" Heta Asset Resolution and imposed a moratorium on debt repayments by the vehicle set up last year from the remnants of defunct lender Hypo Alpe Adria. The step, allowed by new legislation that gives banking supervisors more power to intervene, followed an outside audit of Heta’s balance sheet that exposed a capital hole of up to 7.6 billion euros ($8.51 billion) which the government was not prepared to fill, the FMA said. The moratorium on repayment of principal and capital lasts until May 31, 2016, giving the FMA time to work out a detailed plan to ensure equal treatment of all creditors, the FMA said in a decree published on its website
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More: Greece Talks Break Down; Parties Cannot Even Agree On a Statement