Eurozone bailout fund receives Greek plea

Britain’s Nigel Farage of the anti-EU United Kingdom Independence Party, said, however, that the Greek crisis simply confirmed a terminal split between the economies of northern and southern Europe that made the euro and the European Union unworkable.

French President Francois Hollande agreed.

Commission President Jean Claude Juncker said he wanted Greece to remain in the eurozone but his team was prepared for everything.

Athens has to follow the request up with a detailed plan by the end of Thursday of how the government plans to reform its economy if it is to receive fresh bailout cash to stave off bankruptcy and a possible exit from the euro.

By voting decisively against tough bailout conditions, as Tsipras had urged them to do, Greeks have strengthened his negotiating hand.

Yet he made clear he had gotten the message that there wasn’t a moment to waste as deadlines for debt payments that Greece can not afford draw near.

Speaking hours after euro zone peers, at another emergency summit in Brussels, set Greece a deadline of the end of the week to come up with convincing reform proposals, Tsipras said Greeks had no choice but to demand a way out of “this impasse”.

The announcement of new proposals comes as the majority of Greek people voted against punitive austerity measures demanded by global creditors at a referendum last Sunday. However, a spokesman for the Eurogroup later said there would not be such a call. Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite complained: “With the Greek government it is every time manana”.

The Greek crisis has frayed the nerves of other European leaders, who have accused the Greek government, elected in January on promises to repeal austerity, of foot-dragging and exacerbating the situation.

Eurozone leaders warned Greece late on Tuesday that a new bailout deal should be struck within the next five days or the country would face a banking collapse as well as the start of an exit from the Eurozone.

But that victory did not appear to give him much leverage in talks with foreign creditors, who know that he needs a deal to keep his country afloat.

“I’m extremely somber about this summit”. He said it won’t be enough simply to write a letter stating that Greece wants help from the European Stability Mechanism.

Greece’s main business and tourism associations predicted an “explosion of unemployment” if no deal is reached.

Middle man… President Barack Obama has spoken to both Greek PM Alexis Tsipras and German Chancellor Angela Merkel encouraging them to find a solution.

“It’s not a matter of weeks, we have only a few days”, Merkel told reporters.

Officials expressed frustration and even anger that Tsipras came to Tuesday’s meeting without a detailed plan for acquiring a new bailout.

“We can not exclude a black scenario if there is no agreement by Sunday”.

“n”>Greece may be about to become the first country to step through the exit door and leave the euro zone, according to a Reuters poll that put the chances of the monetary union breaking up at more than 50 percent for the first time.

To avoid that outcome, by 8:30 a.m. on Friday Greece must spell out how it will make its economy more competitive and save money in the process.

Normal commerce is now impossible in Greece. Small businesses, lacking use of credit cards or money from bank accounts, were left to rely on cash from diminishing purchases from customers, as Greeks hold on tight to what they have. “All of us are responsible for the crisis and all of us have a responsibility to resolve it”. “I hope doing better is not so hard as Plutarch once thought”. Robert Hutchings, dean of the LBJ School of Public Affairs, said he does not foresee Varoufakis coming back to teach at UT, as his visiting professorship ended right before he was appointed finance minister. The Stoxx 50 index closed up 1 percent.

Danske Bank analysts expect “probably no major new developments until Greece submits a revised economic programme”.