Greece

About 1,500 people have held a peaceful anti-austerity protest outside an Athens hotel where Greek officials are holding bailout talks with the country's creditors, the International New York Times reported. Wednesday's protest was organized by a labor union affiliated with the Communist Party, which strongly opposes the bailouts that have kept Greece afloat since 2010 and ushered in waves of deeply-resented spending and income cuts and tax hikes.

Teams of officials from the EU and the International Monetary Fund start work in Athens today knowing that euro area finance ministers and the international financial markets are keen for signs of progress on the next tranche of Greece’s €86bn bailout, the Financial Times reported. At stake is whether a deal can be struck on tax and pension reforms that would clear a big obstacle to the IMF’s becoming a full partner in the bailout.

Greece's era of austerity is over, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras claimed Friday, as he painted a positive picture of the reforms his government has agreed to take after the bailout program ends in 2018. Speaking in parliament, Tsipras described the deal reached Monday as an "exceptional success" and said it showed the country's creditors accepted Greece's insistence that it could no longer bear further budget austerity, the International New York Times reported on an Associated Press story.

IMF managing director Christine Lagarde signalled that Greek debt restructuring can wait and the country should focus on overhauling its economy for the duration of its latest bailout, which expires in 2018, the Irish Times reported on a Bloomberg News story. Speaking in a German television interview after meeting Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, Ms Lagarde said “the volume of restructuring will clearly depend on how much reform, how much progress, how strong the Greek economy is” when the aid programme ends.

When asked what he thought about the prospect of yet more austerity to be imposed on Greece by its international creditors, Nicos Papapetrou was fairly short, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. "I had better stop ... because I will start swearing," 49-year old Papapetrou, a shop assistant in Athens said. Greeks appeared resigned on Tuesday to accepting further budget cuts and tax rises after their government agreed to a last-minute compromise of new reforms to keep bailout funds flowing.

The eurozone’s most hawkish member states have laid out their positions ahead of a discussion on Greece’s bailout progress today, following an escalation in tensions between its creditors in recent weeks, the Financial Times reported.

Wanted: a chief executive to run Greece's bank-rescue fund. Job description: work hard and pray for a miracle. Greece has failed to find a boss for its Hellenic Financial Stability Fund since July, when its three-member executive team resigned, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. A new CEO, offered the job in late October quit a week later. His predecessor, an interim boss, had lasted two months.

Greece's economy has met its budget targets and there is therefore no reason for further austerity measures to be imposed as part of a deal with bailout creditors, the government spokesman said Thursday. Greece has been struggling for months to conclude negotiations with its creditors on spending cuts and reforms demanded by European creditors and the International Monetary Fund as part of its third bailout program, The New Zealand Herald reported on an Associated Press story. It hopes to reach an agreement in time for a Monday meeting of eurozone finance ministers.

In a related story, the reported that eurozone finance ministers will miss next week’s deadline for an agreement with the International Monetary Fund to release €7bn in aid to Greece, forcing the bailout fight into the Dutch and French election season where diplomats fear it could become highly politicized. EU officials said that the two sides remained at loggerheads over an IMF demand that Athens be granted significant debt relief and easier surplus targets, meaning that a deal that had been hoped for at a high-stakes ministerial meeting on Monday may now be months away.

Greece's talks with its official lenders on concluding a crucial bailout review have made progress, but more steps are needed to wrap it up, European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs Pierre Moscovici said on Wednesday.