Alexis Tsipras just tried to jam the pin back into the grenade.

Less than nine hours before Greece’s bailout package was due to expire -- and a day after he was forced to shut down his financial industry for lack of cash -- the Greek premier sought a new deal to maintain an aid lifeline and an umbrella to assure the critical flow of European Central Bank loans.

Creditors will consider the gambit during a conference call at 7 p.m. Brussels time, though German Chancellor Angela Merkel said there would be no new talks before Greece’s referendum on Sunday. The plan would cover all the country’s financing needs for two years; it failed to include any economic-reform measures and proposed a restructuring of its crushing debt load. Both elements are likely to be rejected.

“It strikes me as just another brinkmanship tactic,” said Ben May, an economist at Oxford Economics in London. “It could arguably be the starting point for bringing Greece back from the brink, but it’s going to be a pretty bumpy ride.”

The request, contained in a letter to the European bailout fund and Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who heads the panel of euro-area finance chiefs, was sent shortly before Greece was due to miss a $1.7 billion payment to the International Monetary Fund.

David Fuller's view

EU officials from Mad Hatter Jean-Claude Juncker, the unelected President of the European Commission, to Red Queen Angela Merkel, are desperate to keep Greece in the EU.  After all, the EU holds all those expensive Greek debts and does not want to write them off.  Ominously, in this club which countries are expected to join but never leave, the EU fears Grexit would be followed by a queue of other Southern European countries, demanding preferential treatment to keep them on board. 

Meanwhile, Tsipras is holding out to see if a desperate EU will give him better terms.  That seems like folly but anything is possible because the EU is not being run on the basis of sound economic policies.