Via Athens News:
The [far-left] leader of the main opposition Radical Left Coalition (Syriza) party, Alexis Tsipras, was quoted as predicting the country’s default, while also forecasting that the government will “soon present” a return to a national currency (drachma) as a national success. In an interview published with Real News newspaper on Saturday, Tsipras said any re-negotiation of a memorandum signed by Greece with its EC-ECB-IMF creditors ended on the night of the June 17 election, while charging that any payment extension is “essentially a longer rope with which to hang ourselves.”
Meanwhile the Italians have just introduced a (one-week) short-selling ban on financial stocks, and the Spanish followed shortly thereafter with a wider ban on short-selling of all stocks, a move akin to sticking fingers in your ears and shouting, “Lalala, I can’t hear you.”