Greece debt crisis: Bank run gains pace as default fears grow

The broke country is on borrowed time before it goes bankrupt and is forced to exit the euro.

"People are taking more or less everything they have got out of their accounts for fear that the government will be dipping into them next,” a bank official told the Guardian.

The government today promised not to bar or block cash deposits in banks in an apparent effort to stop the withdrawals.

But Greece has struggled to pay pensions, public sector wages and suppliers in recent weeks, which has sent alarm bells ringing through the country.

And fears increased last week when the Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis said that Athens has just two weeks remaining before it completely runs out of money.

Furthermore, a leaked memo over the weekend confirmed that Greece's most recent loan repayment has in effect cleaned out the last of its available cash.

It's now certain that Athens will not be able to make its next €1.5billion repayment to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on June 5 without cash from euro creditors. At the same time it has to find the money to pay pension and wage bills.

An impending loan of a €7.2billion (£5.6billion) would keep Greece running, but it will not be released unless the leftist-government agrees to welfare reforms.

However, the Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has again confirmed that he will not agree to the changes desired by creditors, which include labour and pension overhauls.

Negotiations between the two sides are still taking place. Both sides say they are closer to reaching a deal, but still there has not been a breakthrough.

Time is running out to save Greece, but sentiment from euro leaders has been increasingly nonplussed about a default. Both the IMF and Germany have said that it has made plans to deal with such a scenario.

(Πηγή: express.co.uk)