Greek Finance Minster Warns Austerity is Dangerous

Greece will not yield to pressure to impose further austerity measures, said Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras, responding to the Eurogroup’s call for the indebted country to step up reform efforts in order to secure its next tranche of aid.

“No austerity measures are needed. They are dangerous; we should let the automatic stabilizers work. We are willing to take structural measures with a fiscal impact, but not austerity measures,” Stournaras told CNBC late Thursday.

“Greece has achieved tremendous progress up to now, people have made huge sacrifices, so we have to be very careful now what kind of measures we implement to close the fiscal gap, if any,” he added.

Eurogroup president Jeroen Dijsselbloem on Thursday said Greece must urgently meet key commitments it has made to its international creditors in order to unlock a one-billion-euro ($1.3 billion) loan installment, which is needed to meet its funding needs next year.

via CNBC/a>

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza