Weekend of Fear in Greece as Banks, People Live Day To Day

Dorothea Lambros stood outside an HSBC branch in central Athens on Friday afternoon, an envelope stuffed with cash in one hand and a 38,000 euro ($43,000) cashier’s check in the other.
She was a few minutes too late to make her deposit at the London-based bank. She was too scared to take her life-savings back to her Greek bank. She worried it wouldn’t survive the weekend.
“I don’t know what happens on Monday,” said Lambros, a 58-year-old government employee.
Nobody does. Every shifting deadline, every last-gasp effort has built up to this: a nation that went to sleep on Friday not knowing what Monday will bring. A deal, or more brinkmanship. Shuttered banks and empty cash machines, or a few more days of euros in their pockets and drachmas in their past – – and maybe their future.
On a street corner, a performance artist burned what he said were his last euros. Nearby, an Afghan beggar joked about how he should have gone to Sweden instead. A mother grabbed her toddler’s hand as a dozen policemen motorcycled past, heading to a rally outside Parliament. And in his neighborhood restaurant Panagis Vourloumis, a 78 year-old ex-CEO, current investment banker and survivor of coups, dictators and communists, leaned forward and laid his worries on the table.

 

Read More: Weekend of Fear in Greece as Banks, People Live Day To Day – Bloomberg Business