Nikos Chrysoloras and Eleni Chrepa write:  Running out of options to keep his country afloat, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras ordered local governments to move their funds to the central bank.

With negotiations over bailout aid deadlocked, Tsipras needs the cash for salaries, pensions and a repayment to the International Monetary Fund. Greek bonds fell after the move, pushing three-year yields to the highest since the nation’s debt restructuring in 2012. The order was questioned by local officials and slammed by the leading opposition party.

The decree to confiscate reserves now held in commercial banks and transfer them to the central bank could raise about 2 billion euros ($2.15 billion), according to two people familiar with the decision. The move, reminiscent of step that cash-strapped Argentina has taken over the past decade, shows how time is running out for Tsipras, a point made by European officials who addressed the matter at IMF meetings in Washington in recent days.

A default on the country’s 313 billion euros of obligations and a euro exit would be traumatic for the currency area and plunge Greece into a major crisis.

The new funds may be just enough for salaries and a 770 million-euro payment to the IMF due on May 12, the people said.

The move is a sign of the “dire liquidity situation for the Greek financial system as the government pools all liquidity available,” said Gianluca Ziglio, executive director of fixed-income research at Sunrise Brokers LLP in London. The “next step may be forcing all public-sector entities, including public-sector companies to do the same,” he said.

Greece and its creditors remained at loggerheads with time running out. The sides haven’t even set 2015 budget targets, let alone policies to meet them, an official representing creditors said Monday, asking not to be named as talks aren’t public.

European leaders want Greece to do more to revamp its debt-burdened economy, with progress to be reviewed on April 24 in Riga, Latvia, when finance ministers from the currency bloc meet. European Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis said in an interview in Washington that creditors might need to wait until mid-May to see what

“The situation with Greece needs to be resolved soon,” Cypriot Finance Minister Harris Georgiades said.

Greek officials, including Deputy Prime Minister Yannis Dragasakis, remained defiant saying the government won’t betray its electoral promises and worsen the pain that came from previous austerity measures.

While “so-called” partners, including unidentified IMF officials, want to “blackmail” Greece into adopting measures that would hurt the working class, “we won’t betray the people’s mandate,” Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis said, according to an interview published in Athens-based Real News newspaper.

Stefan RiecherBirgit Jennen writes:  The leaders of Germany’s economy fired back at U.S. criticism of their swelling current-account surplus, arguing it reflects the strength of their companies and the weakness of the euro rather than a lack of domestic demand.

“It would be absurd to discuss whether German competitiveness should be reduced to narrow the current-account surplus,” Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann said in Washington on Friday.

There has been a drumbeat of complaints this month from the U.S. that the surplus, now topping 7 percent of gross domestic product, is a fault line in the global economy and that Chancellor Angela Merkel needs to pare it by stimulating demand at home. Both the U.S. Treasury Department and former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke have made that case, implying criticism of Germany’s bias towards tight fiscal policy.

“Stronger demand growth in Germany is absolutely essential, as it has been persistently weak,” the U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said in the department’s semiannual report on foreign-exchange policies, which it published last week.

Bernanke used his recently begun blog to say “in a slow-growing world that is short aggregate demand, Germany’s trade surplus is a problem.” He advised Merkel’s government to act to raise infrastructure spending and wages.

“The fact that Germany is selling so much more than it is buying redirects demand from its neighbors (as well as from other countries around the world), reducing output and employment outside Germany at a time at which monetary policy in many countries is reaching its limits,” Bernanke said.

Also speaking in Washington, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble blamed the surplus on exchange rates as a declining euro makes products from companies such as carmaker Volkswagen AG cheaper in the international marketplace.

“When I have to defend the surplus, which I do sometimes these days, I point out that the exchange rate contributes to the surplus,” Schaeuble said.

Weidmann said “the depreciation of the euro of course plays a role because German products have become cheaper abroad as a consequence.”

One of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influentail People:

Former US Senator Bill Bradley writes:  I met Mellody Hobson when she was a senior in high school at a breakfast for Chicago business elite. Quite frankly, I don’t remember any of the Chicago business elite, but I did remember Mellody because she made such a deep impression.

Mellody is determined, disciplined and enormously curious. I’ve seen her abilities manifested in the boardroom at Starbucks, where we both serve. She’s always very direct. You do not have to wonder what Mellody’s opinion is. She also has a deep commitment to improving financial literacy among moderate and low-income Americans.

From her efforts as president of Ariel Investments to her work in my presidential campaign, Mellody exudes a cheerful confidence that makes people want to follow her. She has said her goals are to do well, surrounded by interesting people, and change the world for the better. Since she’s already doing those things now, just imagine what the next 30 years will bring.

Jeffrey D. Sachs writes: ExxonMobil’s current business strategy is a danger to its shareholders and the world. We were reminded of this once again in a report of the National Petroleum Council’s Arctic Committee, chaired by ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson. The report calls on the US government to proceed with Arctic drilling for oil and gas – without mentioning the consequences for climate change.

While other oil companies are starting to speak straightforwardly about climate change, ExxonMobil’s business model continues to deny reality.

The year 2014 was the hottest on instrument record, a grim reminder of the planetary stakes of this year’s global climate negotiations, which will culminate in Paris in December. The world’s governments have agreed to keep human-induced warming to below 2º Celsius (3.6º Fahrenheit).

Many of the world’s biggest oil firms are beginning to acknowledge this truth. Companies like Total, ENI, Statoil, and Shell are advocating for a carbon price (such as a tax or permit system) to hasten the transition to low-carbon energy and are beginning to prepare internally for it. Shell has stepped up its investments in carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology, to test whether fossil-fuel use can be made safe by capturing the CO2 that would otherwise go into the atmosphere.
Exxon’s management, blinded by its own vast political power, behaves with a willful disregard for changing global realities. It lives in a cocoon of Washington lobbyists and political advisers who have convinced the company’s leaders that because the US Senate is currently in Republican hands, the business risks of climate change have somehow been nullified, and that the world will not change without or despite them.

At the same time, ExxonMobil is not some marginal actor in the planetary drama. It is one of the central protagonists.  So what does ExxonMobil say about the new climate realities? How does it reconcile its corporate policies with planetary needs?  Unfortunately, the company basically ducks the issue.

The development of the Arctic’s oil and gas resources would contribute to warming far above the 2º limit. The Arctic itself is warming far faster than the planetary average, potentially causing massive, global-scale climate disruptions – which may include the extreme weather patterns recently observed in the US mid-latitudes.

For these reasons, the best recent science, including an important study published in Nature this year, provides a clear and unequivocal message: Keep the Arctic oil in the ground and beneath the deep seas; there is no safe place in the climate system for it.”

ExxonMobil’s brazenness should be deeply troubling for its shareholders. The company’s management is planning to spend vast sums – perhaps tens of billions of dollars – to develop Arctic oil and gas reserves that cannot safely be used. Just as the global shift toward renewable energy has already contributed to a massive drop in oil prices, climate policies that will be adopted in future years will render new Arctic drilling a huge waste of resources.

Pension funds, universities, insurance pools, and sovereign wealth funds worldwide are grappling with the increasing risks, both moral and financial, of owning shares in oil, gas, and coal companies. As Lisa Sachs and I recently explained, responsible investors must urgently query these companies about their business plans to comply with the 2º limit on warming.

Russia has key interests in common with the United States and needs to work with it on a common agenda, Russian President Vladimir Putin said  in a television interview.

In his comments to the state-run Rossiya channel, Putin appeared to soften his anti-American rhetoric after being highly critical. Relations between Moscow and Washington and other Western powers have soured over the conflict in Russia’s neighbor Ukraine, sinking to an all-time low.

“We have disagreements on several issues on the international agenda. But at the same time there is something that unites us, that forces us to work together,” Putin said.

“I mean general efforts directed at making the world economy more democratic, measured and balanced, so that the world order is more democratic. We have a common agenda.”

Putin has in the past fiercely attacked the United States and the West in general, blaming them for the Ukraine crisis, which Russia says was the result of a Western-backed “coup” against Ukraine’s former leader Viktor Yanukovich.

Russia has repeatedly denied accusations from Kiev and the West that it is supporting pro-Russian rebels with troops and weapons in eastern Ukraine, where more than 6,000 people have been killed since last April.

Both Russia and the West say they back a peace deal agreed in Minsk in February, as a result of which a ceasefire in the Donbass region is largely holding.