Greek Fire, Part 29

Keep a careful eye on Greece tomorrow.  If this translated Der Spiegel article is correct, then the IMF, the ECB, and the EU Commission on Financial Affairs is going to announce Monday that Greece has effectively failed to meet its end of the bailout bargain, and the Greek Fire will indeed consume Europe.  In other words, its looking like Greece will have no choice but to default on its bailout debt and be cut off by the EU, turning the Euro into a smoking crater. Reuters UK has more info:

Greece has missed all fiscal targets agreed under its bailout plan, a mission from an international inspection team found, putting further funding for Athens at risk, according to a German magazine.

"The troika asserts in its report to be presented next week that Greece had missed all its agreed fiscal targets," weekly Spiegel magazine reported in a prerelease.

The International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the European Central Bank -- known as the troika -- currently have a team in Greece assessing how sustainable the country's debts are.

The mission will be holding meetings next week before an expected finalisation of the report.

"The deficit in the public budget was higher than expected," the magazine said, referring to the report's findings.

"The reason is that the Greek government still spends more than agreed in the aid programme. On top of that tax income is still lower than demanded."

The IMF has already said it cannot release its part of a 12 billion euro (10.4 billion pound) aid tranche to Greece next month if fiscal conditions underpinning the bailout are not met and the European Commission's top economic official was quoted as saying the EU was setting the same conditions.

"We Europeans have the same conditions as the IMF," EU Economic Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn was quoted as saying in the same prerelease for Monday's Spiegel magazine.

"We will decide on the next tranche after the troika's report. The situation is very serious," Rehn added.

Monday's going to be ugly in Europe.  Very, very ugly.   PS...this proves that austerity isn't the answer.  But the GOP wants trillions in spending cuts anyway...