The Wall Street Journal this week explored the areas of agreement and disagreement between the Greek government and the country’s eurozone creditors, making specific reference to the extremely tight deadlines for working out a deal.

As the article mentions, any changes with regard to the content or the expiration date of Greece’s existing bailout program must be decided by Friday, so that the national parliaments in Germany, Finland and the Netherlands, amongst others, will have enough time to approve them by the end of the month — when the bailout expires.

If a deal is not reached, Greece will be cut loose from the eurozone’s financial support, which along with the IMF, has guaranteed its borrowing needs for the last five years.

According to WSJ, some officials from the Euro area have started to discuss how to make a program exit as “clean” as possible. “This would involve setting out a clear timetable for negotiations on a new program, including a deadline for a deal,” one of these officials told the newspaper.

This development would encourage Greek depositors to keep their money in the banks and persuade the ECB to continue to allow the banks to receive emergency liquidity, thus buying both sides a little extra time to negotiate a long-term deal.

According to WSJ commentator Simon Dixon, this is a deeply flawed “Plan B”.

“No one knows for sure when Athens will run out of money, but there are fears it could be as soon as March. Yet officials say that negotiating a new deal would take a minimum two to three months,” the columnist underlined.