You pays your money

The IMF crowd are down Athens way, and the EU is looking at their books again. Meanwhile they are loking at Ireland.

Here, for example is the Greek situation,

The EU and IMF left a critical audit of Greek finances unfinished on Friday saying more budget work was needed, and the government admitted its deficit target is in trouble.
Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos conceded that Greece would have to revise its public deficit target for this year, a key condition for continued funding from the 110-billion-euro ($158-billion) EU-IMF-ECB bailout loan agreed last year.

The Greek vacuum is still operating. Slightly better news however comes from Ireland,

The EU has agreed to provide Ireland with the next installment of its bailout package.


Ireland will receive €7.5bn over the next two months from the €85bn package granted by the EU and IMF last year.

The EU said the decision to release funds to Ireland followed "positive" quarterly reviews by the troika.

In a statement released this afternoon, the EU praised Ireland for making progress in the recovery programme and addressing weaknesses in the financial sector.

This isn't good news remember, it is merely not worse news. The bailouts are still necessary, and the crisis is far from over, but the shadow over Greece grows deeper and deeper. Meanwhile, what do they have that could act as collateral?