Response to question on short-term examples of debt management
: On the short-term possible measures, the Eurogroup Working Group has a mandate to look into that. Theoretically there are a few options, but nothing was endorsed today; we only got the mandate to look into that. One point to remember is that the interest rates we charge on our loans are determined by our issuing activities. The ESM and EFSF issue from the very short term to the very long term and we can vary that a bit. One option is to lock in interest rates at today’s levels; one could issue a bit more long term, but the disadvantage is that interest rates today would go up. But in the long run that may pay off, because interest rates may rise faster than what we have to pay today for 30-year bonds, for example. So that’s just an example of what is possible; beyond that liability management is an option: with every disbursement we make, we fix the repayment schedule. And it can always vary around the average maturity that was agreed last summer: 32 years – that’s the weighted average maturity. But for every individual disbursement, we have some leeway to make sure there is no bunching of repayments in a certain year, so we have some room for manoeuvre here. And another example is that we know that some creditors charge higher interest rates than us; so one could think of ways to repay them early, and that would also reduce debt service payments for the Greek authorities. (…)
E se "some creditors" fossero i GGBisti e facessero un' offerta volontaria di riacquisto?