Angela Merkel Makes Clear Greece Needs to Honour Agreement

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has ruled out cancelling any of Greece’s debt, saying banks and creditors have already made substantial cuts.

But Mrs Merkel told the Die Welt newspaper she still wanted Greece to stay in the eurozone.

Greece’s left-wing Syriza party won last weekend’s election with a pledge to have half the debt written off.

Its new finance minister has refused to work with the “troika” of global institutions overseeing Greek debt.

The troika – the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund – had agreed a €240bn (£179bn; $270bn) bailout with the previous Greek government.

But Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has already begun to roll back the austerity measures the creditors had demanded as part of the deal.

Meanwhile, EU economic and financial affairs commissioner Pierre Moscovici told the BBC’s Hardtalk that Greece had to honour its previous commitments, although he said he wanted Greece to remain in the eurozone.

via BBC

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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