Euro zone ministers to sign off Greek cash, grill Spain

Euro zone finance ministers are expected to sign off on Greece’s second bailout today and will then shift their focus to Spain as it appears they will violate newly agreed EU budget rules by missing their deficit target again this year.

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Greece, swapped its privately held bonds over the weekend for new, longer maturity paper with less than half the nominal value, slashing more than 100 billion euros ($130 billion) from its debt.

The euro zone ministers are to give their final go-ahead to a 130-billion-euro package to finance Athens until 2014. Even though Greece’s economy shrunk due to repeated austerity measures – the Ministers indicated that they had met all their conditions.

But as Greece’s financial problems have lost some urgency, Spain has raised a new challenge.

To read Jan Strupczewski article: Update 1 – Euro zone ministers to sign off Greek cash, grill Spain

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