Just when it looked like there might be some positive news coming out of Greece, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has gone ahead and poured a huge bucket of cold water over those hopes. According to Bloomberg the IMF negotiating team is leaving Brussels, and the Fund's spokesman was extremely negative: “The ball is very much in Greece’s court,” International Monetary Fund spokesman Gerry Rice told reporters at a media briefing in Washington on Thursday. “There are major differences between us in most key areas. There has been no progress in narrowing these differences recently,” he said. That follows a monster day for the Athens Stock Exchange. Equities surged, and the index closed up up 8.16% (before the IMF news broke). After an evening meeting on Wednesday between Germany's Angela Merkel, France's Francois Hollande and Greece's Alexis Tsipras, there were some slim hopes for a deal by the time of the June 18 Eurogroup meeting. Athens needs to unlock billions of euros in bailout cash to keep itself funded — it has major payments to make to the IMF and other creditors that it is extremely likely to be able to afford on its own. At least some of that relief rally is almost certain to be rolled back tomorrow, based on the IMF's stance: There's more bad news for Athens. According to Reuters, European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker told Tsipras during a meeting Thursday that this was a "last attempt" to get a working deal. Here's their quote from an unnamed EU diplomat in full: "If the process was working properly the president would not have had to have a meeting with Tsipras today. President Juncker made a last attempt to make a deal possible." Greece's four IMF payments that were due this month have been bundled into one, which is worth about €1.5 billion ($1.69 billion, £1.09 billion), and is due on June 30. Next month, it has massive further payments to the European Central Bank to make.Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Here's how Floyd Mayweather spends his millions
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