Greece, a Mexican Standoff

You gotta hand it to the Greeks, they got chutzpah. They are so broke that nobody will loan them any more money. They borrowed so much that the lenders don't dare cut the Greeks off, 'cause if they do, all those Greek bonds the lenders hold will dry up and blow away, leaving the lenders as broke as the Greeks. There was a saying "Borrow one dollar and the bank owns you, borrow a million dollars and you own t he bank."
Greece has a E20 billion bond repayment coming up next month. They don't have the cash to pay it off. So the rest of Europe (Germany mostly) is talking about a Greek handout to let the Greeks make their March repayment. But the Europeans want the Greeks to shape up before handing them another E130 billion. The Greeks don't want to shape up, they have riots in the streets every time shape up (cutting back on pensions, salaries, civil servants) is mentioned.
So far, the Greeks have won a significant concession. Greece will only have to redeem it's bonds for what the owner paid for them, not at face value. Needless to say, a lot of folks have been bailing out of Greek bonds by selling them for cheap and taking a loss. The buyers are hoping for a windfall when bonds they bought for some small fraction of face value get redeemed for face value. This latest deal says "Oh no you don't." Beware of Greeks at the negotiating table. The spirit of Odysseus lives on.
Clearly some of the confusion in the Greek bond wheeling and dealing has to do with speculators who want to get rich quick.
The Economist never talks about these messy details, but the Wall St Journal does.