(Bloomberg) -- Euro region finance ministers failed to reach an agreement on how to keep bailout funds flowing to Greece and will resume talks next week.

“We covered a lot of ground but didn’t actually reach a joint conclusion on how to take the next steps,” Eurogroup Chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem said at a press conference in Brussels. “There has to be a political agreement on the way forward.”

Earlier, four euro region officials said that ministers were moving toward an agreement on a bailout extension. A Greek official then said that no agreement had been made and the government won’t accept an extension of the existing bailout program.

David Fuller's view

Greece is not yet willing to face the uncertainties of a Euro exit.  The EU does not want to face the inevitable collateral risks that would occur as a consequence of ‘Grexit’.  Therefore, they are only talking about the terms of an extension to the current bailout programme. 

In this game of high stakes poker, the Eurogroup’s side holds all the aces.  Greece’s new government is bluffing, and everyone knows it, except perhaps for the people who recently voted them into power.  

I expect that Greece will soon have to accept the terms on offer, perhaps with some largely cosmetic enhancements that will not impress Greek voters.  If so, this crisis will be postponed and Greece’s government will be left twisting in the wind, until it is replaced. 

Meanwhile, Mario Draghi’s QE programme of €60bn per month commences in March.  The long-term consequences of this monetary experiment remain largely unknown.  However, we do know that the major beneficiaries of QE are stock markets.  The EU’s stock markets are unlikely to be an exception, as you can see from this weekly chart of the Euro Stoxx 50, which is already discounting the monetary benefits of QE.