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Lagarde warns Greece will default to IMF, if no payment on June 30th

Greece will default the next day, if it fails to make the bundles payment to the IMF on June 3oth, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund said on Thursday, dismissing rumors that the debt-ridden country would have a month of grace time.

Greece will be in default with the International Monetary Fund at the start of July if it fails to make a repayment on June 30th because there is no grace period or possibility to delay, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said on Thursday.

“It will be in default, it will be in arrears vis-a-vis the IMF on July 1, but I hope it is not the case, I really do,” Lagarde told reporters following a meeting with the Luxembourg finance minister.

“There is no grace period or two-month delay, as I have seen here and there,” she said, speaking before a eurozone finance ministers meeting in Luxembourg.

Here is to note that had Greece dropped just the payment of June 5th or another one of the four payments in June, the IMF would have granted it a month time before declaring “Greece’s default with the IMF. But according to Lagarde, there is no such option if a member has already bundled together several payments

Lagarde said further that a reform of the Greek pension system was critical to sealing a deal with Athens, although small pensioners should be protected.

“Everybody knows that. The Greek authorities know that as well. They have to address all sorts of issues,” she said.

“It is not a question of cutting the small pensions, but the programme of financing the pensions has to hold,” she said, adding that more than 16 percent of Greece’s economic output went to pay pension benefits, which was “way more than the average, pretty much everywhere.”

She also defended the IMF programme with Greece as “credible and flexible” and was supported by the many countries that made up the Washington-based lender.

All this has been nicely said by somebody who earns some $200,000-$300,000 per year but does not pay taxes, has most probably a private pension scheme but has no such provision in her “credible & flexible” IMF program for Greece . *sigh*

 

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4 comments

  1. Giaourti Giaourtaki

    July 1 starts summer break, come back September 1, cow

  2. Let me see
    How would a five year old say that !
    *
    Greece should never have made last months payment & they would not be in this particula situation this month, it would have ben done with.
    QUESTION:
    How are all the other European Union Members able to make their momthly payments ?
    QUESTION:
    Why is Greece the only nation in this situation ?
    OBSERVATION:
    There is definately something shifth going on here, that all the other EU members are cashed up enough to hand over massive amounts of money each month, but Greece is not.

  3. Cut your own (exorbitant) salary to 300 euros a week Mmme #Lagarde and then you will have the right to dictate that Greece must cut pensions