Greece: IMF insists poor must pay.

[Ghost Dog]

"...According to the WSJ, Greece’s creditors won’t accept some of the tax rises on businesses, which they want toned down.

But they also want more money clawed from consumers through VAT hikes.

And Greece’s plan to raise pension contributions while protecting payments to existing pensioners is also being challenged. Creditors want more frontline cuts..."

/...http://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2015/jun/24/greek-crisis-eurogroup-meeting-tsipras-backlash-live#block-558a66a6e4b024f829c5d09d

[Ghost Dog]

1. "Austerity" not negotiable.

... Put simply, the IMF has decided that allowing Greece to wriggle from under the troika's thumb by substituting unenforceable tax hikes for actual, sustainable fiscal reform would send the wrong message to Spain and Portugal ahead of elections this fall where Podemos in Spain and the socialists in Portugal may well score decisive victories at the ballot box.

So it's back to square one — or square four, or five, or whatever square the negotiations were on when talks were still mired in an intractable stalemate last week.

Of course that means the terminal Greek bank run — which had already driven the Greek banking sector's remaining deposits to a level below the Eurosystem's total claims on Greece — will officially restart after taking a breather on Wednesday morning. ..

... So as we've said all along, the troika will get its pension cuts and VAT hike come hell, high water, or Grimbo, because that's the only way to keep the Syriza germ from spreading and it's also the only guaranteed way to ensure that any and all "radicalists" are purged from the Greek government. That is, if you thought The Left Platform was upset on Tuesday, you haven't seen anything yet, because when Tsipras comes to parliament with a deal that looks identical to what the troika put forth months ago, political upheaval will follow in short order and either Syriza will be transformed into a party that will accept Greece's fate as Germany's debt serf, or Greeks will demand a new government and a Grexit — either outcome is ultimately preferable, from the troika's perspective, to giving the rest of the EU periphery hope that austerity (or what passes for austerity in Europe) is negotiable...

/...http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-24/greece-rejects-totally-unaccepetable-imf-counterproposal-demanding-pension-cuts-vat-