There’s growing pessimism of a breakthrough deal between Greece and its creditors, as world finance chiefs gather in WashingtonIntroduction: Hopes fading for Greek deal as IMF/G20 meeting beginsECB protester heads home 8.17am BST The IMF/G20 Spring meeting is the main event in the financial world today, says Michael Hewson of CMC Markets.And with little in the economic calendar, Yanis Varoufakis’s brief meeting with president Obama will also get some attention. But it may not yield much for Greece, Hewson warns:Unfortunately for Mr Varoufakis, sympathy is probably the only thing he will receive in the wake of yesterday’s S&P downgrade of Greece to CCC+ with a negative outlook, and last week’s meeting between Greek Prime Minister Tsipras and Russian President Vladimir Putin.The new Greek government is slowly realising that when you’re trying to negotiate a deal with your creditors, it pays to at least try and generate some consensus and goodwill amongst some of them, and not cosy up to a Russian President who is probably not the most popular person amongst European and US officials at the moment. 8.06am BST Early action in the bond markets: German 10-year bunds are hitting fresh record highs again today, sending the interest rates on its debt down again.The 10-year bund yields has just fallen below 0.1% for the first time ever:10y Bunds at 0.099% 7.56am BST Mario Draghi can take a sigh of relief.Josephine Witt, the activist who disrupted his press conference yesterday with a shower of confetti and anti-ECB leaflets, has left Frankfurt.Bye, Bye, #ecb pic.twitter.com/fgDfRTpT4o 7.53am BST Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of the world economy, the financial markets, the eurozone and business.“There’s no doubt that if this leads to a crisis such as Greece leaving the euro zone, it will cause an enormous amount of disruption and hardship in Greece,”“Even if the contagion risk is much less now than it was, say, in 2012 and earlier, it would not be a good thing in a world economy just recovering from a deep recession to have that kind of uncertainty introduced.”“No one has a clue how we can reach agreement on an ambitious programme.We have the next Eurogroup meeting at the end of the coming week, but nobody expects that there will be a solution.” Related: Greece at substantial risk of default, say experts Continue reading...
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