Greece

Greece's creditors are resisting pressure from the International Monetary Fund to accept bigger losses on holdings of the indebted nation's government bonds, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Lenders want the 70 billion euros ($91 billion) of new bonds the government will issue in return for existing securities to carry a coupon of about 5 percent. The IMF is pushing for creditors to accept a smaller coupon in order to reduce Greece's debt-to-gross domestic product ratio to 120 percent by 2020, a key element of the Oct. 27 agreement by European Union leaders.

Private creditors are balking in talks about forgiving €100 billion ($130 billion) in Greek debts, European officials warned Friday, just as negotiations heated up on the debt restructuring that aims to save Athens from bankruptcy, The Washington Post reported on an Associated Press story. European and Greek negotiators met with representatives from banks and investment funds Friday in Paris, after holding talks earlier this week in Athens.

Nikos Lekkas' team of tax investigators knew they were on to something when they found that a humble Greek farmer on the island of Thasos owned a red Ferrari and a Porsche, Reuters reported. Intrigued by how a farmer who had declared just 100,000 euros (84,000 pounds) in income over the past decade could afford such luxuries, Lekkas dispatched an undercover tax agent to the north Aegean island. The agent was back soon -- not only was the Thasos "farmer" earning far more than he had disclosed to the state, he was in an entirely different line of business: loan sharking.

Greece’s international rescue program continues to slip as the nation’s leaders shirk promised changes, investors flee a beleaguered banking system and concern that Europe will fall into recession adds to the pressure, the International Monetary Fund said Tuesday in its latest report on the country, the International Herald Tribune reported.

It would be Europe’s worst nightmare: after weeks of rumors, the Greek prime minister announces late on a Saturday night that the country will abandon the euro currency and return to the drachma, the International Herald Tribune reported. Instead of business as usual on Monday morning, lines of angry Greeks form at the shuttered doors of the country’s banks, trying to get at their frozen deposits. The drachma’s value plummets more than 60 percent against the euro, and prices soar at the few shops willing to open.

Inspectors for Greece's international lenders and private creditors kick off a round of meetings with the government on Monday to prepare for a new 130-billion euro (£111 billion) bailout plan and bond swap scheme to keep the country afloat, Reuters reported. Greece narrowly averted bankruptcy this month after foreign lenders agreed to release an 8-billion euro tranche of aid, but remains at risk of ending the year with a deeper-than-expected hole in its finances as a recession hits targeted tax revenue.

The International Monetary Fund Monday approved a $2.2 billion tranche of its emergency loan program for Greece, paving the way for the debt-ridden country to avoid default, Dow Jones reported. The IMF board approval of the program allows the fund to immediately disburse financing to Athens, buying time for Europe to prevent a wider spread of the debt crisis into the rest of the euro zone. "Greece has substantial achievements to its credit, including a large fiscal deficit reduction.

Prime Minister Lucas Papademos said Friday that a restructuring of Greece's debt burden was needed, just days after the country launched formal talks with private creditors as part of a plan to cut the debt it owes them in half, Dow Jones reported. Speaking in parliament, Papademos defended his earlier position in which he had opposed just such a restructuring along with his former colleagues of the European Central Bank. Papademos, former vice president of the ECB, was appointed as interim prime minister to head a Greek coalition government tasked with implementing the current debt plan.

Greece's new prime minister headed to Brussels on Sunday to fight for the aid Athens needs to avoid bankruptcy, even as one of his coalition backers refused to give a written pledge to support reforms and a public sector union geared up for strikes, Reuters reported Sunday. Lucas Papademos must convince the International Monetary Fund and the European Union to give Greece the 8 billion euros it needs to avoid a mid-December default, but the conservative New Democracy party has refused to meet their most basic demand.

Greece's new prime minister said Monday his interim government would focus on implementing a European debt rescue deal, warning that failure to do so could force the country out of the eurozone, Agence France-Presse reported. In his first parliamentary address since taking office at the head of a national unity government on Friday, Lucas Papademos said progress had been made on tackling Greece's debt crisis but more was needed to keep it in the single currency.