“Athens, Greece – Greece slipped deeper into its financial abyss after the bailout program it has relied on for five years expired at midnight Tuesday and the country failed to repay a loan to the International Monetary Fund. With its failure to repay the roughly 1.6 billion euros ($1.8 billion) to the IMF, Greece became the first developed country to fall into arrears on payment to the fund. The last country to do so was Zimbabwe in 2001.
“After Greece made a last-ditch effort to extend its bailout, Eurozone finance ministers decided in a teleconference late Tuesday that there was no way they could reach a deal before the deadline. “It would be crazy to extend the program,” said Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbleom, who heads the Eurozone finance ministers’ body known as the eurogroup. “So that cannot happen and will not happen.”
“The brinkmanship that has characterized Greece’s bailout negotiations with its European creditors and the IMF rose several notches over the weekend, when Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras announced he would put a deal proposal by creditors to a referendum on Sunday and urged a “No” vote. Tsipras also offered a unique plan of his own that was “designed to assist the Greek economy break the shackles put on her by her so-called European friends.”
“It is somewhat on the radical side, but so is the financial crisis my country is in,” the Greek Prime Minister stressed, emphasizing that “desperate times often call for desperate measures, and in the same philosophy, times of crisis call for even more radical moves.”
“Basically, Greece’s number one export product are olives and have been for decades, because of our unique climate. And I think that the key to navigating through the current financial hardships safely and with minimum damage is exactly that – exporting more goods. Only, there aren’t really that many things Greece has an abundance of that are eligible for exporting. But the one thing we do have is prime real estate,” the PM revealed.
Tsipras also added that “Greek architecture is famous for its unique style, and coupled with the Mediterranean climate, the mansions, villas and private residences of Greece represent one of the most desirable commodities in today’s market. And especially so when you’ve got Germans, who everybody knows are one of the pickiest nations out there, drooling over Greek real estate. So, I really think that’s the way to go in the near future.”
