Greece’s new finance minister, Vassilis Rapanos, resigned on Monday due to health problems, according to Reuters. Its new Prime Minister, Antonis Samaras, who just took office last Wednesday, is recovering from eye surgery and will miss the European Summit that takes place June 28-29.
According to Reuters, these medical problems have postponed a meeting between leaders of Greece’s new government and international lenders and a new date has not been set. However, on Monday, the leaders of Samaras’s New Democracy party, PASOK, and the Democratic Left party, which is the coalition that that formed, by the slimmest of majorities, to support the bailout (which would allow Greece to remain in the Euro Zone), announced they would be going on what is essentially a roadshow to sell lenders on Greece in order to get better terms for the bailout, which the public in Greece is demanding.
Germany, according to Reuters, will wait for the report by the international lenders before “taking any decisions on how to make adjustments to the bailout package” while domestic critics in Greece want to simply shred the terms of the bailout completely, arguing that it would drive Greece deeper into recession.
As if things were not bad enough for Greece, it must now find a new finance minister and wait until its prime minister is healed before any progress is made on any renegotiations of the terms of the bailout. And with each passing day, more people in Greece are getting restless, demanding more favorable terms or a complete abandonment of the bailouts.
One can only hope America never finds itself in this position.
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