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Greek banks have seen a marked increase in the pace of bank withdrawals as a June 17 general election nears and fears grow that Greece could be forced out of the euro, senior bankers said on Wednesday. Combined daily deposit outflows from the major Greek banks have reached 500-800 million euros over the past few days, with the pace picking up as the election draws closer and rising noticeably on Tuesday, two bankers said. Deposit outflows at smaller and medium sized banks were running at 10-30 million euros. "This includes cash withdrawals, wire transfers and investments into money market funds,...

Excerpts: Worries about a run on Greek banks has rattled Athens this week, after savers withdrew at least 700 million euros ($890 million US) on Monday alone,.. Data shows depositors have also taken flight from banks in Belgium, France and Italy. And on Thursday, Spain’s Bankia was reported to have seen more than 1 billion euros drained by its customers in the past week. In Greece, sources at two banks told Reuters that withdrawals on Tuesday had taken place at about the same rate as on Monday. It is not only Greeks who are worried about their savings. Data shows...

As Greece teeters on the edge of financial collapse, European officials have a new task before them: preventing the financial turmoil from spreading across the continent, across the Atlantic and around the rest of the world. The fear is that Greece’s financial turmoil could spread beyond its borders despite European efforts to create a “financial firewall” to contain it. “The spillover effects, the chain of consequences are very difficult to assess,” said International Monetary Fund President Christine Lagarde on Wednesday. “We can certainly assume that it would be quite messy.”

The country's economy is in a meltdown, raising fears that Greece will exit the Euro Zone completely and default on its huge pile of debt. Political leaders in Athens were due to discuss an emergency government Wednesday to deal with a possible run on banks as it emerged Greeks withdrew almost $900 million in a single day, fearing their country could crash out of the euro currency by the end of the week. An interim government would take the country through to new elections on June 17, triggered by the collapse on Tuesday of talks to form a coalition between...

ATHENS, May 15, 2012 (AFP) - Some 700 million euros, equivalent to US $894 million, were withdrawn from Greek banks on Monday, President Carolos Papoulias said, warning that the situation would worsen in coming days. "During a telephone interview with the governor of the Bank of Greece, George Provopoulos, he informed me that the banks situation was very difficult ... and that the banking system was currently very weak," said the president in a transcript released Tuesday.