BERLIN (MNI) – The Eurozone’s debt crisis has so far not hurt the
ongoing solid economic recovery, ECB Governing Council member Axel Weber
said in a text of a speech to be delivered in the southwestern German
city of Freiburg on Monday.
Pointing to increasing worries about the sustainability of public
finances, especially in the Eurozone, the Bundesbank President asserted
that the global economic and financial crisis has now entered its third
phase.
Yet the debt problems “at least up to now seem not to affect the
heterogeneous but surprisingly robust economic recovery,” Weber said.
He acknowledged, however, that the events of recent weeks have
shown that confidence in public finances even of developed economies can
reach its limits.
In other remarks, Weber rejected calls for countries with high
current account surpluses to stimulate their economies further with more
expansive fiscal policies and larger wage hikes. Those calls are
frequently aimed at Germany.
“Such a policy…would be in clear contradiction to the goal of
sustainable growth,” Weber argued.
–Berlin bureau: +49-30-22 62 05 80; email: twidder@marketnews.com
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