Greece continues to exert a baleful influence on markets | “Where there’s a will there’s a way”

Greece continues to exert a baleful influence on Forex and other markets, in the absence of other market moving news, and today could be more of the same. That is, of course, unless some word leaks from the two-day Eurogroup meeting in Brussels to the effect that talks have either broken down or that a definitive resolution, agreeable to the beleaguered Hellenic Republic as well as all the other Euro member states and the IMF, has been put in place. But we are not holding our breath.

What developments there were yesterday could be classified as being on the positive side of neutral. Yanis Varaoufakis, Greek Finance Minister, when questioned by reporters on his arrival about a timetable for a resolution, answered “ in a few days”, but his body language was not convincing. The Eurogroup itself issued a statement that was as positive as it could have been, considering that whoever drafted it seemed to have the brief of effectively saying nothing at all.

Greece keeps up payments to the IMF

No observer of the situation seems to know exactly where Greece is getting the money, but it was able to come up with €750 million for the IMF yesterday, a day earlier than scheduled. This is on top of €200 million only a short time ago that had to be paid to the same organisation. In the meantime, opinion polls (hopefully run using methodologies that are different from those that “predicted” the outcome of the recent General Election in Britain) are consistently reporting that as many as 76% of the Greek population do not want to leave the Euro. Could it turn out to be a case of “Where there’s a will there’s a way”?