Deadlines are often an important element of economic design, from the design of auctions like eBay's, whose auctions have a well specified deadline after which no more bids are accepted, to negotiations in which e.g. the date at which a labor contract expires may be the deadline for calling a strike.. But the deadlines in the news for a financial bailout of Greece, and Greek banks, is very different from the (repeated) deadlines for nuclear negotiations with Iran. In the case of Greece, banks will really fail soon without some help--the deadline is real. In the case of Iran, the deadlines are supposed to concentrate the minds of negotiators, but they have already been extended multiple times...