A mas­sive debt write­down for Greece will sta­bilise the eu­ro­zone by re­mov­ing a threat posed by its "weak link," a strate­gist with in­vest­ment bank Gold­man Sachs said in an in­ter­view pub­lished on yes­ter­day. Greece needs a so-called PSI, or pri­vate-sec­tor in­volve­ment, deal to be ironed out, as well as a sec­ond EU bailout, if it is to be able to make a debt re­pay­ment of 14.4 bil­lion eu­ros on March 20. With those two deals in place, a "sys­temic dan­ger in the eu­ro­zone, which comes from the weak link, that is, Greece," will be re­moved, Francesco Garzarel­li, head of the US bank's macro­eco­nom­ic re­search sec­tion, was quot­ed as telling the Greek dai­ly To Vi­ma. He said the sov­er­eign debt of Greece, Italy and Spain, for ex­am­ple, would be­come a debt for the en­tire eu­ro­zone, dis­si­pat­ing the pre­vi­ous threat, adding: "The eu­ro­zone will be sta­bilised."

Ne­go­tia­tors from the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nance, which is rep­re­sent­ing banks and fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions owed mon­ey by Greece, and the French bank BNP Paribas be­gan crunch talks with Athens last Wednes­day. The ne­go­ti­a­tions on cut­ting around 100 bil­lion eu­ros ($129 bil­lion) from Greece's mas­sive debt of more 350 bil­lion eu­ros were ad­journed Fri­day with both sides ex­press­ing op­ti­mism about the out­come. Tech­ni­cal de­tails re­main to be worked out, the Greek press said yes­ter­day, no­tably the in­ter­est rate to be ap­plied to the re­main­ing debt af­ter the write­down, an is­sue that tor­pe­doed talks held on Jan­u­ary 13.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund and Berlin want to set the rate at about three per cent, while the IIF has pro­posed a rate of 4.35 per cent. Athens wants an out­line of an ac­cord to be ready by to­day, when eu­ro­zone fi­nance min­is­ters meet in Brus­sels, and a full agree­ment by Jan­u­ary 30 when the Eu­ro­pean Union will hold a sum­mit.