THE VOICE OF INTERNATIONAL LITHUANIA
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Angela Merkel and
Dalia Grybauskiate
Lithuania Thursday welcomed a last-ditch deal to shore up the currency bloc, saying the resolve finally showed by EU heavyweights should stop the debt crisis from spreading.
"We've witnessed much more resolve from major EU countries," Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius said in a radio interview.
"Now we see much more political effort to find solutions to problems that have not been solved for almost one and a half years," he added.
Leaders from the 17-nation eurozone meeting overnight in Brussels reached a deal early Thursday to fix their festering debt crisis, boosting a bailout fund to a trillion euros, pledging new money for Greece and pushing banks to take a 50-percent loss, or "haircut", on Greek debt.
They acted amid raging concerns that the crisis could spiral, with Italy in the spotlight.
Lithuania's President Dalia Grybauskaite -- who attended Wednesday's summit of all 27 EUnion members held before the eurozone talks -- said she expected the deal to provide a buffer.
"These decisions, if implemented swiftly, are very useful, as the problems will be stopped in southern Europe and will not spread north," Grybauskaite, the EU's former finance commissioner, told the Baltic News Service.
Lithuania aims to adopt the euro by 2014.
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Something of a good news from Brissels but probably short term only unless China commits long term funds of its own.
People and capital are fleeing LT despite the ambitious austerity program; let's hope there will be positive change in the longer term.
This austerity policy of the Kubilius Governmentt was necessary because communists/nomenklatura plundered the LT economy by rent-seeking policies under former governments and just put their people in posh EU jobs, etc. And I many times warned against expecting too soon and too much from this austerity policy, esp. that PM Kubilius was so ambitious and did not ask for the IMF help but paid close to 10% interest on non-IMF private sector loans.
In a sense, Greeks partied at the EU expense all the time and won, LT showed abundant virtue in the financial sense and lost (so far)!
THE LESSON:
When Europe goes to the dogs, invest in dog food and do not expect to be rewarded for your fiscal virtue even if you go as far in austerity as eating dog food only:)
Valdas Samonis