S&P: We'll Likely Declare Greece in Default

Standard & Poor's will likely downgrade Greece's rating to "selective default" after its debt restructuring, the rating agency said at a Bloomberg event today—though it adds that the move might not destroy the European Union's credit. "It's not a given that Greece's default would have a domino effect in the eurozone," the chairman of S&P's sovereign rating committee said, according to Reuters.

Greece, meanwhile, is furiously trying to complete that debt restructuring—Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said today that it has only a week to do so before international aid stops flowing, Bloomberg reports. Greece is trying to get banks and other private lenders to turn in their bonds for new ones worth half as much, but the creditors want 4% interest on those bonds, which is more than the countries propping up Greece are willing to pay, the AP explains; Germany's finance minister even called it "blackmail." (More Greece stories.)