German Lawmaker: Greek Debt Restructuring Has Contagion Risk
BERLIN (Dow Jones)--A restructuring of Greek debt should be avoided as it bears a contagion risk for Ireland and Portugal, a high-ranking German government lawmaker said Wednesday, while a French minister also rejected such a step.
"A restructuring in the sense of a debt cut is the last resort," Klaus-Peter Flosbach, the financial spokesman in parliament for Chancellor Angela Merkel΄s Christian Democrats, told Dow Jones Newswires in an emailed statement.
"It can only be considered when it΄s unavoidable. For that, all reform measures would need to be exhausted and fruitless. I don΄t see that currently," Flosbach said, adding that a restructuring would shut Greece out of capital markets for years.
French Budget Minister Francois Baroin said a restructuring of Greek sovereign debt is "out of the question" after a weekly cabinet meeting in Paris Wednesday.
Instead, he pointed to the mechanisms already put in place by the European Union to help countries in fiscal difficulties that have "the objective of defending our currency."
Germany΄s Flosbach said a comment in April by German Deputy Foreign Minister Werner Hoyer that a Greek debt restructuring "would not be a disaster" is to narrowly focus on Greece.
"The decisive goal is to stabilize the euro zone as a whole," Flosbach said. "That aim we don΄t reach better through a restructuring, nor faster, nor cheaper. To the contrary. If we don΄t restructure, we limit the risks of a systemic contagion."
Flosbach said, however, that a voluntary reduction in interest rates on Greek debt, or a further extension of debt maturities could be considered. But to grant Greece lower interest rates on its debt, markets first will want to see the actual success of current fiscal and structural reforms, he said.
If additional aid measures for Greece were to be necessary, the euro zone΄s current rescue mechanism, the European Financial Stability Facility, could provide further loans, Flosbach said, but "only under very tight conditions."
Greece in May 2010 was granted an EUR110 billion rescue package by the International Monetary Fund and bilateral loans from euro-zone countries, while the EFSF was only set up after that.
Thomas Straubhaar, director of the Hamburg-based Institute for the World Economy, said Wednesday some kind of restructuring of Greek debt is unavoidable.
A rapid debt "haircut," however, could have incalculable consequences and trigger a domino effect and possibly even a banking crisis in Germany, he said. German banks hold large amounts of Greek sovereign debt.
A restructuring extended over several years, comparable to the Brady-bond program to help Latin American countries overcome their debt crisis in the 1990s, would cause less macro-economic harm, Straubhaar said.