Greek Bailout Drama Drags On

Greece missed yet another deadline on Tuesday, with Prime Minister Lucas Papademos scheduled to meet with party leaders on Wednesday in yet another effort to put the seal on an agreement necessary to secure another bailout package. Outside the parliament building, meanwhile, chanting demonstrators protested additional austerity measures as public unions struck.

Reuters reported that missing paperwork was blamed as the cause of the postponed meeting on Tuesday, even as European Union (EU) officials grew more impatient. Some even began to discuss the possibility of Greece leaving the euro zone. While a member country cannot be expelled by other member countries, if Greece decides on its own to go it alone, some members may not try to stop it.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said as much in the report, expressing the frustration felt by many other euro zone countries, and was quoted saying, “We are currently so strong in the rest of the euro zone, in the countries who have the euro, that we can handle an exit of Greece—a Greece which runs into serious trouble. They really have to implement all the measures they have promised to take. If that doesn’t happen we can’t help them.”