Greece hurtled closer to the catastrophic possibility of a Euro exit Saturday after Europe responded to the government’s call for a referendum by refusing to extend Athens’s desperately needed bailout.
The most dramatic day in the five-month crisis saw long lines of people queuing at cash machines in Greece in fear of capital controls as Athens looked certain to default on a huge IMF payment on Tuesday.
The European Central Bank is set to meet on Sunday amid fears Greece’s banks will be unable to open on Monday, while Germany said the Eurozone would do “everything” to protect contagion through the single currency.
Leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras announced the referendum on bailout proposals by Greece’s creditors via a televised speech in the small hours of Saturday, saying he had rejected a debt deal because it involved further austerity measures that would cause “humiliation” to the Greek people.
Angry Eurozone finance ministers accused Greece of “unilaterally” breaking off talks and said they would not extend Greece’s bailout past June 30, the same day a 1.5 billion Euro payment to the International Monetary Fund falls due.
“It was not us who walked away from the talks, it was the Greek government that walked away,” a grim-faced Eurogroup president Jeroen Dijsselbloem said after tense talks in Brussels.
But he added: “Our door is always open.”
The Greeks really are a bunch of muppets, a country that stupid should not be part of the EU, let alone the Eurozone
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