Where Greece hopes to find cash - and why the ECB says no

Cash-strapped Greece had been hoping that the European Central Bank -- which is about to pump billions into the eurozone economy -- would help ease its torment, but so far the ECB has been markedly reluctant to come to its aid.

These are the key issues over which they are at loggerheads:

The bank -- whose governors meet on Thursday -- is one of the big three institutions, along with the IMF and the European Commission, who must make sure Greece sticks to the terms of its 240-billion-euro ($265-billion) bailout, and the extension that the country's new leaders have just agreed.

But new promises of more spending by Greeces left-wing government to tackle the "humanitarian crisis" in the country got a chilly reception from the ECB's president Mario Draghi.

"It is far from certain that the bank is ready" to give Greece the helping help that it expects with its creditors, said economist Carsten Brzeski of ING bank.

Athens would like to borrow more money in short-term bonds called treasury bills, its only real means of raising cash on its own.

But neither the ECB nor the other two members of the "troika" that hold Greece's purse strings are ready to raise the ceiling of 15 billion euros it is allowed to raise in this way.

The governors of the ECB halted in February an exception that temporarily allowed Greek banks to refinance themselves from the ECB in Frankfurt using Greek debt as a guarantee.

As long as the ECB thinks Greece is not doing enough to push through the reforms it would like, this source of financing is unlikely to be restablished.

Since this source of cash was cut, Greek banks have had to borrow from the Bank of Greece at more costly rates through a mechanism called Emergency Liquidity Assistance....