The Greek government is preparing to present its plans for a new debt swap deal to the Institute for International Finance (IIF) on Thursday, in the hope that an agreement can be made to prevent the country from defaulting on its debt.
Officials from the Greek finance ministry visited Washington to meet with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Wednesday, as the various players in negotiations struggle to find a consensus with time running short.
Greek workers held a general strike on Tuesday, and there were protests in Athens on Wednesday as talks continued.
Markets were boosted earlier in the day by reports that the IMF was seeking to raise more than $500m in funds from emerging markets to be able to bail out Italy. However, those reports were denied.
Greece owes international private creditors around €200bn, and the IIF is negotiating on their behalf.
An agreement in October to swap existing bonds for new ones - valued at 50% of the existing paper but more likely to be paid back - left many of the details to be negotiated, and last week talks broke down as investors and the government could not agree on the interest rate, or coupon, to be paid on the new, lower value bonds.
Greece needs this agreement for two reasons. Firstly, it simply has to reduce the absolute level of its debt and the amount of money that it is currently losing through interest payments. Secondly, and more pressingly, coming to an agreement is a condition of a second bailout agreed with the IMF and the EU.
Without that bailout, Greece will not be able to pay back a €14.4bn loan due on March 20. Countries typically "roll over" their debt in these circumstances, issuing new bonds to pay back the old ones. That option is not available to Greece. It is highly unlikely that any private investors would buy Greek debt, given how close to a default it is sailing.
That means official money is realistically the only option for the Greek government if it wants to avoid a default.
The country could force bondholders to accept the debt swap. If it were to do so, it would be in default. This would have serious ramifications both for the country - which would be unlikely to raise money in the capital markets for some time, and would be subject to punitive conditions on any borrowing from the IMF - and for the international financial sector.
Banks would see liquidity dry up as they stop lending to each other and as depositors pull their money out of banks in anticipation of a further collapse. Greece has already seen significant capital flight, and would likely see more. A default could preface the country's exit from the single currency.
It would also trigger credit default swaps (CDS), which are instruments designed to protect holders against such a default. However, they have proliferated not just as a tool to manage investors' risks, but as investments in their own right, with hedge funds in particular using them as directional bets on the country's failure to pay.
There are obviously concerns in the banking sector, which has consistently broken records with the amount of money deposited at the ECB overnight, forgoing interest payments for the security of the central bank.
Cash stored in the ECB's overnight facility passed €500bn for the first time this week, and has continued to rise, indicating that, despite a supply of cheap liquidity from the ECB, banks are still risk averse and worried about potential shocks.