Greece’s bailout expires

Associated Press

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 due to the International Monetary Fund, deepening fears over whether it will be able to remain in the eurozone.

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 payments 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 night 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 Dijsselbloem, who heads the eurozone finance ministers’ body known as the eurogroup. “So that cannot happen and will not happen.”

“The program expires tonight,” Dijsselbloem said.

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 Sunday and urged a “No” vote.

The move increased fears the country soon could fall out of the euro currency bloc, and Greeks rushed to pull money out of ATMs, leading the government to shutter its banks Monday and impose restrictions on banking transactions for at least a week.