- IMF Director Christine Lagarde warned yesterday that “If the level of Greece’s privately held debt is not sufficiently renegotiated, then public creditors will also have to participate", meaning that bodies such as the eurozone’s temporary bailout fund, the EFSF, and the ECB may be forced to take losses. However, the IMF stated that it has not asked the ECB to participate in the voluntary restructuring. The IHT reports that eurozone leaders have begun discussions with the ECB over how it could avoid taking losses in restructuring, including swapping its holdings of bonds for ones which would not be eligible under the current plan.

Concerns that Portugal will need a second bailout are growing. Antonio Saraiva, head of Portugal’s main industry confederation, said yesterday, “I’ll dare to say we have a credit crunch...What is lacking is €30bn.” Separately, Ireland returned to the bond markets for the first time since 2010 by swapping a bond maturing in 2014 for one maturing in 2015 with a slightly higher interest rate, allowing the country to avoid a build-up of maturing debt in 2014. Open Europe’s Raoul Ruparel is quoted by the WSJ Real Time Economics blog discussing the potential for a significant increase in the ECB’s balance sheet over the next year.


FT WSJ CityAM EurActiv Telegraph BBC Irish Times Irish Times 2 Mail EUobserver Independent Times Times 2 Les Echos BBC Guardian 2 Times 3 Telegraph 2 FT 2 FT 3 WSJ 2 Irish Times 3 CityAM 2 FT 4 FT 5 FT 6 WSJ: Talley IHTGuardian 3 Mail Corriere della Sera Expansión El Economista FTD Les Echos Liberation Liberation 2 Times: Cavendish

Greece has been loaned more euros than their total GDP in the last 18 months. Only a politician or bureaucrat would keep throwing money down that rat hole. These people are completely crazy.