'This could be the last chance of a deal' for Greece as talks collapse and default looms

After less than an hour of discussion, Greece's latest talks with its creditor institutions fell apart on Sunday night. Greece's representatives say the discussion lasted for 45 minutes, while EU sources say it barely stretched to half an hour.

There still seem to be huge gaps between the positions of the creditors (the other eurozone nations, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund) and Greece's radical government.

The remaining major disputes still seem to be over the extent of austerity (including things like VAT increases), Greece's state pension system and further reform to hiring and firing laws in the country.

These were the sticking points to a deal two months ago, and there seems to have been very little progress on them.

According to the Associated Press, on Sunday an anonymous Greek official said that the country will never accept cuts to pensions and wages, or increases in the cost of basic necessities.

At the same time, outgoing IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard made it clear in his own blog just how important those reforms are to his institution, making it clear that pension and VAT reforms will be crucial to a deal:

We believe that even the lower new target cannot be credibly achieved without a comprehensive reform of the VAT - involving a widening of its base - and a further adjustment of pensions. Why insist on pensions? Pensions and wages account for about 75% of primary spending; the other 25% have already been cut to the bone. Pension expenditures account for over 16% of GDP, and transfers from the budget to the pension system are close to 10% of GDP.

The next best hope for a deal or some sort of progress is Thursday June 18, when the Eurogroup gathering of finance ministers goes ahead.

"Time is running out and [the Eurogroup meeting] could be the last chance of a deal before the June 30 deadline when the bundled June IMF payments come due and the current program expires," said Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML) analysts in this week's look-ahead note.

BAML's Athanasios Vamvakidis even suggested last week that without meaningful progress by the Friday just passed, it would be extremely difficult to get any deal cobbled together by June 30.

So the meeting of eurozone finance ministers coming will be the next big signal of how close a deal is - and whether Greece will get its latest €7.3 billion ($8.07 billion, £5.19 billion) bailout disbursement - cash it needs to make the International Monetary Fund (IMF) payments due at the end of the month.

But those June 30 IMF payments are just the beginning. Greece will have to fail to make those payments for a month before the IMF takes action. Before then, Athens has to make €3.5 billion (£2.52 billion, $3.92 billion) in payments to the European Central Bank (ECB) on June 20.

The ECB is probably the most important factor here. If the ECB judges that the Greek government has defaulted on its bonds, it will likely pull away its Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ECB) from the Greek banking system. That assistance is currently keeping the banks propped up, and withdrawing it could send the country's whole financial system into free fall.

So according to analysts at HSBC and elsewhere, 20 July is the hard deadline - both a payment which the government almost certainly can't wait, and one which could have immediate consequences if it's missed.

A Greek default could mean capital controls for the country, and it could even be the first step towards Grexit.