EUR
The major headline this morning is Greece confirming they will not be
making the €300mil payment to the IMF as they have found a loop hole that
allows them to bundle the whole of Junes four payments together as
one €1.6Bn payment at the end of the month.  

“Under an executive board decision adopted in the late 1970s, country members
can ask to bundle together multiple principal payments falling due in a
calendar month. The decision was intended to address the administrative

EUR
The major headline this morning is Greece confirming they will not be
making the €300mil payment to the IMF as they have found a loop hole that
allows them to bundle the whole of Junes four payments together as
one €1.6Bn payment at the end of the month.  

“Under an executive board decision adopted in the late 1970s, country members
can ask to bundle together multiple principal payments falling due in a
calendar month. The decision was intended to address the administrative
difficulty of making multiple payments in a short period,” he added.

Tsipras emerged from Wednesday night’s talks with European Commission president
Jean-Claude Juncker and Eurogroup president Jeroen Dijsselbloem in a confident
mood, insisting that an agreement would be found in the coming days. But the
Syriza leader returned to Greece yesterday to discover outrage from sections of
his ruling party over Brussels’ ongoing demands. His coalition government
reassured the public late last night that it will not accept “extreme
proposals” laid out in the latest reform plans, while Tsipras spoke with German
Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande via conference
call.

According to a Greek government official, Tsipras told Merkel and Hollande that
the lenders’ proposal could not lead to a deal because it was not taking into
account the progress made in Brussels. However, as is becoming commonplace, the
official insisted there was optimism that a deal could be reached soon.

GBP
Yesterday we saw the bank of England Keep its interest rates on hold in the
face of mixed signals about the strength of the UK’s recovery. The Bank’s
nine-member Monetary Policy Committee voted unanimously to leave the rate where
it has been for the last six years.
 
Expectations that the central bank would maintain the rock bottom rate were
bolstered by the release of data showing that the pace of growth had halved to
0.3% in the first quarter of 2015 due to a slowdown in the UK’s dominant
services sector.
 
The interest rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee also kept the stock of
assets bought under the Bank’s quantitative easing programme at £375bn after
Britain’s economy grew at a slower pace than expected in the first three months
of the year.

The minutes of the committee’s latest meeting, due for release in a fortnight,
will shed more light on the thinking behind the decision. Financial markets are
not predicting a rate rise until 2016 due in part to the oil price plunge,
which in April took Britain into deflationary territory for the first time in
50 years.

USD
The Dollar strengthened after fewer workers filed applications for unemployment
benefits last week, signalling the US job market remains firm even after growth
plunged at the start of the year.

Jobless claims decreased by 8,000 to 276,000 in the week ended May 30 and the
total number of people receiving unemployment insurance payments was the
smallest in more than 14 years.

Job figures released Friday from the Labour Department are set to show steady
gains in hiring that should allow Federal Reserve officials to maintain
confidence that labour-market progress is on track.

Key Announcements
13:30 – USD – Non farm employment change
13:30 – USD – Unemployment rate

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