Future of Greece, US Treasuries and history down the drain

The daily briefing “FirstFT” from the Financial Times.

Greece is now even more likely to go bust in May after German finance minister WolfgangSchaeuble ruled out a deal to release bailout funds to Athens. Talks between Greek authoritiesand the country’s bailout monitors have got nowhere and senior officials have been pessimistic but Mr Schaeuble is the first senior eurozone policy maker to be quite so blunt. (FT)

He blamed the Syriza-led government for reversing improvements made by previous administrations under the bailout programme: “Nobody has any idea how we can agree on an even more ambitious programme,” he said. “You can’t spend hundreds of billions… in a bottle without a bottom.”

In the news

Japan biggest holder of US Treasuries It surpassed China to be the biggest official holder of US government debt, with its total holding edging up from $1.21tn a year ago to $1.224tn. Higher-yielding bonds have lured Japanese investors while China, which pegs its currency to the dollar, has seen growth slow and is reinvesting more of its earnings domestically. (FT)

Confetti and chaos A protester interrupted Mario Draghi’s press conference to dump confetti on him as he began speaking. Unperturbed, the ECB president continued the meeting and downplayed talk of tapering the central bank’s monthly bond purchases, saying that QE was a marathon which had barely begun. (FT)

UK election and political props The leader of the Scottish Conservatives has refused to rule out supporting the Scottish National Party in Holyrood, even though the Tories have made a virtue of ruling out a Westminster deal with the SNP. Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, meanwhile, unveiled a centrist manifesto and declared his party open to doing business with either Labour or the Conservatives. (FT)

EY’s $10m Lehman penalty Ernst & Young settled for allegedly helping Lehman Brothers tohide its precarious financial situation. The Lehman’s collapse sparked market panic and led to bank bailouts and an economic downturn – this is the only legal enforcement action by US authorities since then. (FT)

The EU’s not done yet The charge against Google was just an opening shot. The EU’s competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager is planning another antitrust showdown with Russia’s Gazprom. (FT)

It’s a big day for

Unilever The consumer goods company reports first-quarter results. Forbes expects therecovery of the euro will have helped boost revenue after the currency dragged growth down by as much as 4.6 percentage points in the previous quarter.

Food for thought

Challenges in China Chinese premier Li Keqiang speaks to the FT and says Beijing is willing to work with others to boost the global economy and denied wanting to replace the Bretton Woods institutions. “There is no such thing as breaking the existing order,” he insisted.

History down the drain All Luciano Faggiano wanted to do was open a trattoria in Lecce. When he dug a trench to check the problems with the toilets, he found a Messapian tomb, a Roman granary, a Franciscan chapel and etchings from the Knights Templar. He’s still digging. (NYT)

The costs of gun crime Mother Jones examines the true cost and effects of gun crime in the US: “one of our more startling discoveries is that nobody really knows.” It estimates that it costsmore than $229bn a year , with each homicide costing taxpayers nearly $400,000.

Video of the day

The US wage battle Hundreds of workers took to the streets of New York City calling on companies to raise their minimum wage and allow workers to unionise. Protest organisers say that moves by Walmart and McDonald’s to raise the hourly wage to nearly $10 an hour encouraged more low-paid staff to join the US-wide day of action. (FT)

This article is published in collaboration with The Financial Times. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

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Author: FirstFT is the Financial Times’ editors curated free daily email of the top global stories from the FT and the best of the rest of the web.

Image: A Greek and a European Union flag fly outside the Bank of Greece. REUTERS/John kolesidis.