My Big Fat Greek Default
(or Damn the Gods /
Release the Kraken)

Greece waves the white flag and appeals for international aid. 

Greece was forced to make the request after investors shunned the country’s bond offerings because of concern about its runaway debt. Those worries intensified Thursday when the European statistics agency raised its estimate for Greece’s debt above the government’s most recent figures, pushing the yield on Greek bonds to nearly 9 percent.

At that point, the need for international funds seemed a certainty, and Mr. Papandreou made the request while on a visit to Kastellorizo, an island in the Aegean Sea.

The financing will come from an emergency aid package arranged two weeks ago in Brussels in which Greece’s euro zone partners pledged up to 30 billion euros ($40 billion) in loans to Greece. The International Monetary Fund is expected to provide an additional 15 billion euros.

Teasury Secretary Geithner and the IMF push for global tax on banks but G20 is split on the idea.

Mr. Lipsky’s boss, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the top I.M.F. official, caused rumblings on Friday when he suggested that some countries were moving too quickly on reform. He said the Obama administration’s plan "comes too soon" given the need to coordinate responses across countries.  

"I read that and I thought, really?" Mr. Geithner said in response. "My sense is that it’s been 15 months -- or more than a year -- since we started this process in the United States. We’re not moving with excessive haste." 

Mr. Geithner acknowledged that one of the biggest reform elements -- forcing banks to hold more capital as a buffer against economic disruptions -- was partly beyond the scope of the legislation being debated by Congress. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, a global regulatory body, is coordinating discussions around capital requirements in the hope of announcing new standards by the end of this year.