Greece, facing fiscal crash, waits for bailout deal
ATHENS -- Greece's economy has been brought to its knees and its people are suffering.
Like everyone else here, for two weeks Christina Vasilopoulou has only been able to withdraw around $60 a day from cash machines. She was asked how she is going to survive without money.
"The people from the village will send potatoes, tomatoes," she said. "We will have another kind of economy where people exchange their things."
Greece's creditors, chiefly Germany and France, have already bailed it out twice in the last five years with loans of over $250 billion. But Greece has never recovered from the financial crisis of 2008: a quarter of the workforce is unemployed.
In return for an extended bailout, Greece's creditors demanded tax hikes and cuts to pensions and public spending.
Greek officials walked out of negotiations last month and Greece's radical left wing prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, accused international creditors of blackmailing his country.
But facing financial collapse, this week he was forced into a humiliating backdown, agreeing to nearly all of the creditors' demands, in return for a new bailout of $60 billion.
Greece's economy minister George Stathatkis said this week he was confident the country's creditors wouldn't let it go bankrupt because that would trigger financial losses around the world.
He said the chances that Greece will be able to strike a deal with creditors is "very high."
"I'm not a gambler, but I think well above 80 percent," he said.
The danger for Greece is that its creditors will decide they no longer trust the Greek government, and refuse to bail it out for a third time. Many people here in Greece are angry with the country's creditors, but also frustrated with their own government. Even after capitulating to its creditors demands, Greece still doesn't have a deal to avert bankruptcy.
