Behold the magnanimity!
Der Spiegel magazine has reported that creditors were willing to ease austerity measures for Athens because the Greek economy had deteriorated so badly that the once planned budget targets now seemed to be "illusory".
Germany says Greece must aim for "ambitious" reforms in bailout talks [Reuters]
The mission is proving difficult.
Greece doesn't need any of you! Greece's finance minister on Thursday denied a report citing the country's representative to the IMF as saying Athens would need a third bailout package. The euro weakened against the dollar on the report, which was later also denied by the official quoted in the article and came as international inspectors are mulling handing over the next tranche of Greece's second aid package. "The country's positions are formulated by the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister," Greek Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras told Reuters in response to the Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal report. The article quoted Thanos Catsambas, Alternate Executive Director at the IMF Executive Board representing Greece, as saying the country would need a third bailout from European creditors. It also reported Greece could not bridge a funding gap and had met only 22 percent of targets for the second bailout...Catsambas issued a statement saying the article included "at least three important inaccuracies". [Reuters]
When Germany says 'bend over,' you say 'how far'.
Most people would be freaking the f*ck out. Yanis Varoufakis isn't most people.
So, talks are going really well.
![Was brand-new when this whole thing started. By Haitham Alfalah (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons](https://dealbreaker.com/.image/ar_16:9%2Cc_fill%2Ccs_srgb%2Cfl_progressive%2Cg_faces:center%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_620/MTYxMjc3NTU1MjY4NzI0MjEz/parthenon.jpg)