Despite a series of top-level meetings, Greece and its international creditors could not reach an agreement till Saturday morning and remained in deadlock over its debt crisis. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras failed to reach a deal with Greece’s lenders.
Thereafter, a meeting of European finance ministers could not break the impasse.
The Greek government faces default if it fails to make a €1.6 billion repayment to the International Monetary Fund by Tuesday 30 June.
As European Union leaders met in Brussels, Germany’s Angela Merkel warned that talks were going nowhere.
In the meantime, concern about a possible Greek exit from the Eurozone hit German consumer confidence going into July.
The latest measure of German consumer confidence shows that shoppers are becoming more cautious for the first time since October.
The GfK consumer sentiment indicator, based on a survey of 2,000 Germans, dropped to 10.1 going in July from 10.2 in June, below the consensus forecast for an unchanged reading of 10.2. GfK said a Greek debt default and exit from the Eurozone, which had previously seemed a remote possibility by experts, now appears to be a very realistic scenario.
Finally, the first quarter contraction of the US economy was less than previously estimated, supported by a bigger gain in consumer spending.
Gross domestic product fell at a 0.2 per cent annualised rate, up from a previously reported 0.7 per cent drop, data released by the Commerce Department showed this week.
That was in line with a forecast by Bloomberg News. The modest decrease in growth, which came on the heels of 2.2 per cent growth in the fourth quarter, matched economist estimates.
Upward revisions to exports, private inventory investment, non-residential fixed investment and state and local government spending also contributed to the smaller decrease.
On the other hand, the report showed an upward revision to imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP.
This report was compiled by Bank of Valletta plc for general information purposes only.