Did EU leaders exacerbate the Greek problem?
As the issue regarding the Greek economy, and in particular the Greek budget deficit, continues to grab the headlines around the world there are growing concerns that EU leaders may well have exacerbated the situation due to their vague promises of assistance. At the time it appeared that the EU was in a position to offer significant financial assistance to the Greek authorities but over the last few days this apparent across the board support has begun to waver.
The first cracks in the promise of assistance came when the German authorities went "off the party line", suggesting that financial assistance for the Greek economy may not be forthcoming in the short term. This would appear to be at odds with the overall EU understanding of the situation although surprisingly EU leaders have also failed to back up their initial promises with cold hard cash.
This weekend we saw the Greek Prime Minister complaining about the vague promises from the EU and the time in which it has taken to clarify the situation. It will be interesting to see whether a formal rescue plan is published in the next few days because this problem is not going to go away and needs to be addressed before it begins to impact upon other economies in the Eurozone.
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