RETURN OF GREXIT?

Everything old is new again: with bailout talks stalled, desperate Greeks are making a run on the banks in what Business Insider identifies as an eerie echo of past Greek crises. . . .

At this stage, the Greek debt crisis seems stuck in a cycle of eternal return, with Greeks and Germans alike perpetually clinging to their own comforting delusions to avoid uncomfortable truths: Greece will never be able to pay off its unsustainable debt load, and it cannot last in the Eurozone in the long term. The current chaos is just the latest manifestation of the refusal to cope with these realities, and prospects for Grexit now look more likely than they have since the summer of 2015.

The negotiators remain at loggerheads over fundamental issues: Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is battling the IMF over labor reforms and pension cuts, while the establishment in Brussels and Berlin refuses to accept the IMF’s insistence on Greek debt relief. If nothing gives, the IMF could decide not to participate in the bailout, effectively dooming it and raising the possibility that Greece would be forced out of the eurozone.

You can kick the can down the road, but not forever.