US treasury secretary's remarks do not go down well with some eurozone ministers.
Timothy Geithner, the US treasury secretary, met some negative reactions when he attended a meeting of eurozone finance ministers in Poland today, according to EU sources.
Geithner took the unprecedented move of attending the meeting, held in Wroc?aw, Poland, today, where he told ministers?about his idea to increase the firepower of the eurozone's rescue fund, the European Financial Stability Facility, using a technique known as ?leveraging?.
One source close to the discussions said that although talks were polite, some of those attending the meeting judged his suggestions to be ?provocative?, especially as he said that the US would not be implementing a financial transaction tax, as urged by many EU member states.
The source said that discussions could be portrayed as ?leverage versus the financial transaction tax?, with some ministers considering that it was ?odd that he was telling us what to do?.
The US has said it will not introduce a tax on financial transactions. The EU has failed to reach a global agreement on the issue and the European Commission is now likely to publish plans to introduce a tax only within the EU.
In public most ministers said that they did not object to Geithner's suggestions but Maria Fekter, Austria's finance minister, was less diplomatic. ?I found it peculiar that even though the Americans have significantly worse fundamental [fiscal] data than the eurozone, they tell us what we should do and when we make a suggestion, they say no straight away,? she told reporters after the meeting.
Anders Borg, Sweden's finance minister who attended the afternoon session when finance ministers from non-eurozone countries joined the meeting, said: ?It's quite clear that the US has a huge deficit problem and an even bigger debt problem so the situation would be better for the whole world economy if the US could show sustainable fiscal growth going forward.?
Michael Noonan, Ireland's finance minister, described Geithner's presentation as ?succinct? and said that his idea to boost the effectiveness of the EFSF was worth investigating.
?We need to sit down and look at it,? he said. ?He certainly wasn't talking down to anybody, he was sharing his views.?
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