MNeagle
16th May 2010, 01:55 PM
FRANKFURT — Political leaders and central bankers on both sides of the Atlantic struggled over the weekend to persuade jittery investors that Europe would pull through its sovereign debt crisis, saying that it would be helped by a stronger-than-expected economic recovery in the United States.
Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, said the bank’s decision last week to buy government bonds was a response to the worst economic crisis in Europe since World War II — possibly since World War I — and did not signal the start of an expansive monetary policy, with the specter of years of high inflation.
“We have not relented on our principles,†Mr. Trichet told Der Spiegel, the German newsmagazine, according to a transcript on the bank’s Web site. “Price stability is our primary mandate and compass.â€
And in an interview broadcast on Sunday, the U.S. Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, signaled his confidence that Europe would resolve its debt crisis and that the American economy would withstand its impact. “Europe has the capacity to manage through this,†Mr. Geithner told Bloomberg Television. “And I think they will.â€
As investors absorb the details — and the potential weaknesses — of the $1 trillion European rescue plan, Mr. Geithner seemed to be trying to draw a sharp, if implicit, contrast to remarks last week from another senior economic adviser to President Barack Obama, Paul A. Volcker. Mr. Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman, startled some investors when he spoke of a possible “disintegration†of the euro zone — a striking shift from his expressions of confidence of only two months earlier.
Partly because of Mr. Volcker’s comments, stock markets dropped on Friday and the euro fell to an 18-month low, threatening to undermine extraordinary measures that the European Central Bank and European Union leaders took earlier in the week to halt a sell-off of European sovereign debt.
The markets’ loss of faith in the solvency of Greece, Portugal and even Spain had threatened not only public finances but also the health of the region’s banks.
The European Central Bank’s decision to buy bonds — just three days after Mr. Trichet said the idea was not on the table — cut the risk premium on government bonds issued by Greece, Portugal and other indebted European countries, but it also generated fierce criticism that the central bank had succumbed to political pressure.
The bank acted shortly after European Union political leaders committed almost $1 trillion to avert a debt default by Greece, Spain or other euro-zone countries.
As the world struggles with a slow and uneven economic recovery, Lawrence H. Summers, the director of the White House National Economic Council, expressed confidence in the world’s biggest engine of growth, the American economy.
“We’re in a very different place than we were a year ago,†Mr. Summers said on CNN. “People thought we would be mired for years, so I think we’re doing better than anyone expected us to do.â€
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said on the same CNN broadcast that an “unparalleled level of economic and policy coordination†had helped the world avoid “something as big as the Great Depression.â€
The Greek prime minister, George A. Papandreou, sought on Sunday to reassure policy makers and investors about his government’s seriousness in carrying out tough austerity measures and tightening notoriously loose fiscal practices. Mr. Papandreou insisted that his government would carry out the austerity measures needed to put Greece back on a solid footing. “We have made our mistakes, but we are living up to this responsibility,†he told CNN.
Still, doubts about the underlying health of vulnerable European economies continued to well up. Jürgen Stark, a member of the European Central Bank executive board who is the bank’s de facto chief economist, was quoted on Sunday as saying that the European rescue plan had not resolved underlying debt problems. “We bought time, not more than that,†he said in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Financial markets fear that the austerity measures needed in Greece and some other countries to regain control of deficit-ridden budgets could derail economic recovery and give rise to the sort of public anger that has already brought thousands of Greeks to the streets of Athens in deadly protests.
But Mr. Geithner said that the European rescue package was an “enormously important step†and that U.S. economic growth was expected to continue apace despite Europe’s travails. “Our economy is getting stronger,†he said. “We’re seeing a lot of strength, improvement and confidence.â€
Still, Mr. Trichet emphasized that there was much more for Europe to do.
He called on European leaders to take a “quantum leap†in their control of financial and economic policy across the euro zone. “We need improved structures, to avoid and sanction wrongdoing,†he said.
As financial regulatory efforts proceed around the world, Mr. Summers, himself a former Treasury secretary, urged governments to coordinate their banking standards.
“What the international community should resist,†he said, “is an attempt to place one set of standards on foreign banks and a different and lower set of standards on one’s own institutions.â€
Mr. Trichet is a strong supporter of stronger banking and financial market regulation, suggesting that an international consensus is building.
Mr. Stark, in his interview, said that the 16 countries that use the euro still needed to reduce their deficits and reform their economies. The currency itself was not in danger, he said, “but in a critical situation.â€
He urged European Union leaders to introduce new rules to promote stability and growth, and to impose automatic sanctions for countries not conforming to European Union debt rules.
Mr. Stark rejected suggestions that the European Central Bank had compromised its independence, and he promised that its bond purchases would not amount to an inflation-inducing increase in the money supply. The bank will withdraw liquidity from the banking system to offset the effect of the bond purchases, he said.
Yet he tacitly confirmed that a significant minority on the central bank’s governing council opposed the unprecedented decision to buy bonds. Mr. Stark said he shared the concerns of Axel Weber, president of the German central bank and a member of the governing council, that the bond purchases could ultimately prove destabilizing. Mr. Stark refused to say how he had voted on the question of the bond purchases.
The bank reversed itself on buying bonds amid signs that the debt crisis was spreading to the banking system.
“The situation was already starting to get worse on Thursday afternoon and throughout Friday of the week before last,†Mr. Trichet said. “A number of markets were no longer functioning correctly. It looked somewhat like the situation in mid-September 2008 after the Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy.â€
Some Europeans have complained that Germany’s reluctance to act sooner — partly because of domestic political considerations in a country deeply weary of footing a disproportionate share of Europe’s bills — had worsened the crisis.
“The process has to be depoliticized,†Mr. Stark was quoted as saying.
Mr. Trichet seems to have been particularly anxious to reassure the German public — which associates runaway inflation with the rise of Nazism in the 1930s — that price stability remains the E.C.B.’s prime directive.
“I fully understand the particular sensitivity of my German friends,†Mr. Trichet said. “But facts are facts: inflation in Germany has never been as low as it has been over the past eleven and a half years.â€
Mr. Papandreou, for his part, rejected some of the German complaints about the generous benefits enjoyed by some Greeks. Some public-sector workers in Greece can retire a dozen years earlier than the increasingly resentful Germans helping to pay for the Greek rescue.
“We’re paying back the loans we’re getting,†he said. “Some of these comments have been unjust.â€
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/17/business/global/17euro.html?pagewanted=2&partner=rss&emc=rss
Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, said the bank’s decision last week to buy government bonds was a response to the worst economic crisis in Europe since World War II — possibly since World War I — and did not signal the start of an expansive monetary policy, with the specter of years of high inflation.
“We have not relented on our principles,†Mr. Trichet told Der Spiegel, the German newsmagazine, according to a transcript on the bank’s Web site. “Price stability is our primary mandate and compass.â€
And in an interview broadcast on Sunday, the U.S. Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, signaled his confidence that Europe would resolve its debt crisis and that the American economy would withstand its impact. “Europe has the capacity to manage through this,†Mr. Geithner told Bloomberg Television. “And I think they will.â€
As investors absorb the details — and the potential weaknesses — of the $1 trillion European rescue plan, Mr. Geithner seemed to be trying to draw a sharp, if implicit, contrast to remarks last week from another senior economic adviser to President Barack Obama, Paul A. Volcker. Mr. Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman, startled some investors when he spoke of a possible “disintegration†of the euro zone — a striking shift from his expressions of confidence of only two months earlier.
Partly because of Mr. Volcker’s comments, stock markets dropped on Friday and the euro fell to an 18-month low, threatening to undermine extraordinary measures that the European Central Bank and European Union leaders took earlier in the week to halt a sell-off of European sovereign debt.
The markets’ loss of faith in the solvency of Greece, Portugal and even Spain had threatened not only public finances but also the health of the region’s banks.
The European Central Bank’s decision to buy bonds — just three days after Mr. Trichet said the idea was not on the table — cut the risk premium on government bonds issued by Greece, Portugal and other indebted European countries, but it also generated fierce criticism that the central bank had succumbed to political pressure.
The bank acted shortly after European Union political leaders committed almost $1 trillion to avert a debt default by Greece, Spain or other euro-zone countries.
As the world struggles with a slow and uneven economic recovery, Lawrence H. Summers, the director of the White House National Economic Council, expressed confidence in the world’s biggest engine of growth, the American economy.
“We’re in a very different place than we were a year ago,†Mr. Summers said on CNN. “People thought we would be mired for years, so I think we’re doing better than anyone expected us to do.â€
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said on the same CNN broadcast that an “unparalleled level of economic and policy coordination†had helped the world avoid “something as big as the Great Depression.â€
The Greek prime minister, George A. Papandreou, sought on Sunday to reassure policy makers and investors about his government’s seriousness in carrying out tough austerity measures and tightening notoriously loose fiscal practices. Mr. Papandreou insisted that his government would carry out the austerity measures needed to put Greece back on a solid footing. “We have made our mistakes, but we are living up to this responsibility,†he told CNN.
Still, doubts about the underlying health of vulnerable European economies continued to well up. Jürgen Stark, a member of the European Central Bank executive board who is the bank’s de facto chief economist, was quoted on Sunday as saying that the European rescue plan had not resolved underlying debt problems. “We bought time, not more than that,†he said in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Financial markets fear that the austerity measures needed in Greece and some other countries to regain control of deficit-ridden budgets could derail economic recovery and give rise to the sort of public anger that has already brought thousands of Greeks to the streets of Athens in deadly protests.
But Mr. Geithner said that the European rescue package was an “enormously important step†and that U.S. economic growth was expected to continue apace despite Europe’s travails. “Our economy is getting stronger,†he said. “We’re seeing a lot of strength, improvement and confidence.â€
Still, Mr. Trichet emphasized that there was much more for Europe to do.
He called on European leaders to take a “quantum leap†in their control of financial and economic policy across the euro zone. “We need improved structures, to avoid and sanction wrongdoing,†he said.
As financial regulatory efforts proceed around the world, Mr. Summers, himself a former Treasury secretary, urged governments to coordinate their banking standards.
“What the international community should resist,†he said, “is an attempt to place one set of standards on foreign banks and a different and lower set of standards on one’s own institutions.â€
Mr. Trichet is a strong supporter of stronger banking and financial market regulation, suggesting that an international consensus is building.
Mr. Stark, in his interview, said that the 16 countries that use the euro still needed to reduce their deficits and reform their economies. The currency itself was not in danger, he said, “but in a critical situation.â€
He urged European Union leaders to introduce new rules to promote stability and growth, and to impose automatic sanctions for countries not conforming to European Union debt rules.
Mr. Stark rejected suggestions that the European Central Bank had compromised its independence, and he promised that its bond purchases would not amount to an inflation-inducing increase in the money supply. The bank will withdraw liquidity from the banking system to offset the effect of the bond purchases, he said.
Yet he tacitly confirmed that a significant minority on the central bank’s governing council opposed the unprecedented decision to buy bonds. Mr. Stark said he shared the concerns of Axel Weber, president of the German central bank and a member of the governing council, that the bond purchases could ultimately prove destabilizing. Mr. Stark refused to say how he had voted on the question of the bond purchases.
The bank reversed itself on buying bonds amid signs that the debt crisis was spreading to the banking system.
“The situation was already starting to get worse on Thursday afternoon and throughout Friday of the week before last,†Mr. Trichet said. “A number of markets were no longer functioning correctly. It looked somewhat like the situation in mid-September 2008 after the Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy.â€
Some Europeans have complained that Germany’s reluctance to act sooner — partly because of domestic political considerations in a country deeply weary of footing a disproportionate share of Europe’s bills — had worsened the crisis.
“The process has to be depoliticized,†Mr. Stark was quoted as saying.
Mr. Trichet seems to have been particularly anxious to reassure the German public — which associates runaway inflation with the rise of Nazism in the 1930s — that price stability remains the E.C.B.’s prime directive.
“I fully understand the particular sensitivity of my German friends,†Mr. Trichet said. “But facts are facts: inflation in Germany has never been as low as it has been over the past eleven and a half years.â€
Mr. Papandreou, for his part, rejected some of the German complaints about the generous benefits enjoyed by some Greeks. Some public-sector workers in Greece can retire a dozen years earlier than the increasingly resentful Germans helping to pay for the Greek rescue.
“We’re paying back the loans we’re getting,†he said. “Some of these comments have been unjust.â€
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/17/business/global/17euro.html?pagewanted=2&partner=rss&emc=rss