Greek crisis: EU leaders must act decisively or face disaster, says IMF

Guardian
June 21, 2011

The International Monetary Fund has warned European leaders that their hesitant response to Greece's debt crisis risks triggering the world's second global financial meltdown in three years.

As EU finance ministers scrambled to build a second bailout of Greece in the space of a year, but delayed throwing Athens a €12bn lifeline until next month, the IMF delivered its bluntest public criticism to date of the way EU leaders have handled the crisis.

"Policymakers are yet again facing uncomfortable dilemmas, raising uncertainty about the final outcome," the fund said in its annual assessment of the eurozone. "With deeply intertwined fiscal and financial problems, failure to undertake decisive action could rapidly spread the tensions to the core of the euro area and result in large global spillovers … a disorderly outcome cannot be excluded."

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