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Tag Archives: France

EU Summit Looking for Solutions to Debt Crisis

Lael Brainard

The financial ministers of the euro zone’s largest economies will meet on Tuesday prior to the upcoming full-blown summit of the European Union to be held on Thursday. The financial ministers of Germany, France, Spain and Italy hope to come up with a plan to shrink their differences on how to deal with the present economic crisis and plans for developing a more secure economic future for the zone.

This meeting comes in the wake of the announcement by Cyprus that it will seek a bailout solution to its own economic woes, the fifth European Union member to do so. The four ministers plan to discuss how to manage the present crisis in the short-term while also devising sound policies for the integration of long-term fiscal and banking strategies so that economic stability and growth can be achieved.

US Treasury Under Secretary for International Affairs Lael Brainard has been dealing with Europe and financial diplomacy with them.  She is pushing the EU leaders to put “more flesh on the bone” on the solutions they come up with to overcome the debt crisis at Thursday’s summit.

"The particulars on how they go forward and how they design their firewall, how they design their policies, those are things that at the end of the day sit with those European leaders," Brainard said in an interview. "We're all looking forward to seeing some of the specifics.”
 

Europes’ Credit Rating Starts To Slide

Moody’s credit rating agency announced that it is considering downgrading several countries in Europe and has already cut the ratings for Italy, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia and Slovakia by one level. Spain was cut by two levels.  This follows Standard and Poor’s downgrade of European countries over a month ago on January 13. S&P cut the… Continue Reading

New EU Economic Policy?

The European Union has been heaping the criticism on Spain vis-à-vis the way it has been dealing with savings banks and tax policy.  But Spain has not taken this lying down.   Indeed, according to a Bloomberg article it has been “persuading the EU to water down judgments issued as part of a new economic-policing system.”… Continue Reading

Meeting of Euro Big Banks

The big wigs met yesterday in Paris with the goal of making peace with Euro authorities vis-à-vis how investors will participate in the Greek sovereign debt reconstruction.   According to an article in The Financial Times, this is also meant to ease Greek’s burden as well as make the “banks’ original plan that would have seen… Continue Reading

Greece and Europe’s Crisis

Violence Emerges in Athens In an article by Louise Armitstead, it seems that Europe’s debt crisis is getting out of control in more than just financial ways. Just two days ago the Athens parliament was subject to a violent outburst while the capital’s politicians discussed “savage spending cuts.” The people outside were less than happy,… Continue Reading

Financial Femme Fatale?

If Christine Lagarde – who was yesterday put on the shortlist to head the International Monetary Fund – succeeds, she will be “the first woman to head the global emergency lender.” She has a pretty good chance too, in the way she has been handling the world economic crisis until now. Once Dominique Strauss-Kahn handed… Continue Reading

Doom and Gloom Ahead for Global Economy?

Things aren’t looking good again. We keep hearing about the global economic crisis but were hoping that the recovery from it was well underway. Unfortunately, when looking at the stats, this doesn’t seem to be the case. Oil prices are increasing, sovereign debt burdens are becoming unsustainable and along with lack of certainty vis-à-vis the… Continue Reading

Where Is the IMF Headed?

With the global economy still in somewhat of a crisis and all the events in Japan impacting world finances too, it might be understandable if one were to inquire about the current position of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) today. Of course though, when it comes to such large monetary issues, where there are two… Continue Reading