Greece mulling pulling out of Euro

If this is accurate, the question is whether Greece thinks that they can inflate their way out of their debt.

. . . Der Spiegel Online, citing German government sources, says that Greece, faced with daily protests and a terrible economy, is mulling the idea of returning to its own currency.

The euro is down about 0.9% against the dollar at 1.4427 after trading as high as 1.46 earlier in the New York day.

Speculation of a possible Greek debt restructuring (default) has rattled through the markets for the past several weeks, with Eurocrats consistently denying any such thing will occur. Greece was the first of three euro-zone countries to require a bailout from the EU and IMF. Ireland and Portugal have since joined the club.

The Spiegel Online report is being met with some skpeticism. In the report, it said European Commission leaders would hold a crisis meeting tonight to discuss the Greek situation. But a Eurocrat spokesman said no such meeting is taking place tonight or over the weekend and called the reports of a Greece meeting “totally wrong.”

A Greek official has also denied that Greece is considering an exit from the euro-zone.

Also undercutting the report a bit: yield spreads between Greek debt andd similar German debt haven’t moved very much. Of course, those spreads are already at massive wides.

“Suggestions that Greece is threatening to leave the euro zone…nothing more than a bargaining tactic,” says Douglas Borthwick of Faros Trading. . . .