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skunk at the picnic
Eurozone officials decisively rejected U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner's plan to hyperinflate the world full of dollars after two days of talks in Wroclaw, Poland, which presently holds the rotating presidency of the EU. As Bloomberg News put it, this morning, Geithner "floated a variation of a 2008 policy he developed while at the New York Federal Reserve that would expand the reach of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) using leverage in a partnership with the ECB..." This idea didn't fly with the Germans, in particular. "The EFSF's sole purpose is the financing of states and that's in order as long as it's done via the capital market," said Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann, in remarks to reporters, today. "If it's done via the central bank it constitutes monetary state financing," which is not allowed under Eurozone rules. "We don't think that real economic and social problems can be solved by means of monetary policy," added German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble," who was standing right next to Weidmann. "That has never been the European model and it won't be." The media coverage did not really do justice to the nasty treatment that Geithner got. Contrary to news reports, Geithner was not invited to the European finance ministers session in Poland, he bullied his way in, basically inviting himself. And his presence was not welcome. Austria's Finance Minister Maria Fekter, who recently said she fully supported the Glass-Steagall breakup of the big banks, was most blunt. She declared, "I found it peculiar that even though the Americans have significantly worse fundamental data than the Eurozone, they tell us what we should do, and when we make a suggestion... they say no straight away."



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