European finance chiefs begin the final stage of hammering out aGreek rescue to prevent the euro area's first sovereign defaultafter the country was slapped with the world's lowest credit ratingby Standard & Poor's.

Yields on 10-year Greek bonds climbed to a euro-era record of17.12 percent today before an emergency session of financeministers in Brussels. They're seeking to narrow differences on howinvestors share the cost of easing Europe's biggest debt burden andto wrap up a new financing plan at a leaders' summit on June 23-24,a year after Greece received a first bailout.

“The market is placing much too high a probability on thispossibility that Greece will default imminently,” Peter Westaway,chief European economist at Nomura International Plc, said today onBloomberg Television's “First Look.” “Policy makers just aren'tgoing to let Greece default. It's completely fanciful to think thisis going to happen.”