Our friends at Livequawk are highlighting comments made by Greek fin min Varoufakis on tv this morning and reported by The Guardian newspaper
Varoufakis told Greek television channel ANT I that he was proud his team was so obscure while negotiating their four-month bailout extension.
I use the term creative vagueness. I want to be the first minister of finance who will never refer to a number if I am not sure that I will attain it
And Varoufakis insisted that he had warned his counterparts that he didn't want to speak of numbers because he didn't want to be ultimately exposed and contradicted.
The Greek finance minister also lobbed a rhetorical grenade at dissenters in the governing Syriza party.
If we wanted real freedom from Europe, we would have to exit the euro but that would be catastrophic
The live thread at the paper also reports that PM Tsipras has convened a meeting of his whole economics team
Insiders are saying that the "emergency" talks Tsipras has called with his economic team are focusing on two things:
• 1) The financing gap that Greece faces imminently (it has to service IMF loans, which expire in March, of just under €2bn euro and has to redeem short-term debt amounting to €21.8bn by the end of June).Greek officials are increasingly voicing concerns about how such loans will be financed, amid mounting speculation that Athens may even ask the IMF to delay the repayment•
2) Whether the Greek government should hold its own vote on the bailout extensions, given the level of dissent since the deal was done. The Government spokesman, Gavriel Sakellarides, suggested this morning that the bill may be debated "article by article." [to avoid one single debate over the plan]
The creaking strains of compromise continue to cause concern
