In a letter to the Financial Times daily, published on 29 June, 19 acclaimed economists and public figures, among them Joseph Stiglitz, Thomas Piketty, Massimo D’Alema, Panicos Demetriades, Mary Kaldor and James Galbraith, called on European leaders to enable Greece to pay the €1.6bn payment to the IMF today (June 30).
They specifically propose a debt swap with ECB bonds coming due in July and August in exchange for bonds from the bailout fund, with longer maturities and lower interest rates. They note that “the contractionary austerity policy demanded of Greece has been discredited by the IMF’s own research department; and second, that Syriza’s leaders are committed to undertaking far-reaching reforms in the Greek state — if they can get the latitude to do so.”