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Argument: EMF would not be big enough to save entire EU countries

Issue Report: European Monetary Fund

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Roberto Perotti argued in the Economist magazine roundtable on this topic: “(B)y the authors’ calculations this facility would today give Greece access to something like .65 percent of its GDP … plus any additional discretionary fund from the pool of all accumulated savings. However, .65 percent of GDP would make no difference to Greece today; and … the intervention needed would eat up the whole fund just for a small country like Greece. The key problem country, Spain, with a public debt just above the Maastricht level this year, would have made virtually no contribution to the EMF. In the end, effective intervention, especially when the risk of contagion is high, is likely to depend on the discretion of Germany and other non-problem countries, just as it does now.”[1]