Germany's finance minister
Wolfgang Schaeuble has been talking to
Reuters ahead of the G20 summit in Mexico this weekend.
He said he did not want the two-day meeting in Mexico City to concentrate
exclusively on the eurozone crisis to the detriment of other urgent issues such
as the "fiscal cliff" facing the United States and Japan's debt problems. 
"The United States and Japan bear as great a responsibility for (ensuring
stability) as we Europeans," he said.
"The G20 economies must decisively win back confidence with structural
reforms and sustainable financial policies. This is the most important
precondition for strengthening global economic conditions," Schaeuble said.
"Without consolidation and reforms we risk further loss of confidence and
still less growth. No sustainable growth can be built on a mountain of debt,"
said the minister, known for his advocacy of fiscal rigour even in times of
recession.
Schaeuble has taken a tough line on Greece and other weaker members of the
eurozone during the region's three-year sovereign debt crisis, insisting they
swallow austerity medicine even as their economies sink deeper into recession.
But he had warm words for Spain, saying it was on the "right path" and that
there were signs - seen for example in falling wage costs and in the current
account - that its economic imbalances were improving.
Schaeuble reiterated that Greece, still locked in difficult talks with its
international creditors aimed at averting bankruptcy, must implement the tough
measures it has promised.
1 comment:
The leading EUsceptics with good understandings of economics argued in the early 1990s against many people's view at the time, that a single currency would swiftly unravel. Instead, they said that the disadvantages of a single currency imposed over a sub optimal currency area with many diverged economies but no political union would only be seen over time, perhaps lasting 20 years.
Gradually, year by year, the stresses and strains would mount until eventually, centrifugal forces so powerful as to be of almost unimaginable strength and destructive intent, would, like a powerful earthquake, split the whole insane project asunder.
Mrs Merkel says the EZ problems will last another 5 years. Even were this to be the case, which it clearly is not as the briefest study of the USA's single currency problems and solutions instantly reveals, many New Dawns will have arisen all over the peripheries by then and the entire Continent will be shaking in readiness for a quake terrifyingly high on the Richter scale.
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