The news this morning that the IMF may be the answer to the fiscal woes of Greece is not good news for the Euro (although Ireland individually will benefit from a weaker Euro, any IMF intervention may weaken our reserve currency status).
However, it may ultimately prove to be the ‘least worst’ solution, up until now the EMU nations and the ECB were all in agreement that Europe would solve its own problems, Sarkozy has been particularly vocal on this, but now the Germans seem to be pulling away from the idea of a bailout. Why? One one hand there are elements of the German leadership that feel that the IMF are the only ones with the ‘instruments’ that can fix the problems in Greece.
Greece has issues deeper than the surface problems visible in demonstrations and minor riots, their statistics are not trusted internationally, something which they have gone to great pains to reverse.
When it comes to German feelings on the matter, their conservative national paradigm doesn’t sit well with what they …