Debt crisis: live

Speaking to the Guardian after his speech, he said:

European governments should be given some time ? If you ask the Greek people to slash their spending by 30-40pc, it's not possible. So there should be some tolerance, but the determination to carry on austerity should not be relaxed. It is only the issue of how you can balance one against the other.

12.29 Greece's PM is to embark on a tour of the Middle East, China and Russia to try to attract investment into the embatlled country, according to reports.

The ANA news agency said:

Samaras will travel to Qatar on November 27 and (his office) is planning journeys to China and Russia with the aim of attracting investors.

A government source also told AFP:

The Qatar trip will definitely be held but as regards the others we are awaiting an official confirmation.

12.04 More than one in twenty public sector workers in Portugal were sacked in the first nine months of the year, according to the country's finance ministry.

Public sector staff fell by 5.1pc to 581,444 as the government chose not to renew many temporary teaching contracts at the end of the school year.

The reduction is well ahead of the 2pc cut demanded by European debt inspectors as part of Portugal's ?78bn bail-out package.

The unemployment rate in Portugal has jumped by almost a percentage point to 15.8pc since the start of the year.

11.36 Italy's finance minister is confident that a deal will be reached on Greece next week.

Vittorio Grilli told Bloomberg TV:

We know that there are several options for helping Greece get through this very important challenge [...] I am clearly optimistic that we can come to a decision.

11.31 Mr Weidmann has admitted that Greece will need another debt writedown "to regain access to capital markets," but added that this could only be offered once the country had implemented harsh reforms.

He added that two questions needed to be addressed:

1.) How big was the black hole in Greek finances?

2.) How can Europe make the country's debt sustainable again?

Mr Weidmann said:

One should ask, if it would create trust if Greece were to receive a debt writedown today, or would it not make more sense to give the prospect of a writedown that one would need to regain market access when the reforms are actually carried out.

11.27 More from Mr Weidmann, who has been speaking at a panel discussion in Berlin this morning.

Mr Weidmann repeated that price stability should be the ECB's "primary goal and everything else must be subordinate."

There is unity on the council on this aim," he said.

Mr Weidmann also said that comparisons between the ECB, Bank of England and Federal Reserve, the latter of which have unleashed waves of unsterilised bond purchases (or QE) into the market, were unhelpful.

11.02 Commenting on the trade data, Howard Archer at IHS Global Insight, said:

While the Eurozone?s overall export performance in the third quarter was encouraging, there remains a significant danger that exports will be limited in the near term at least by weakened global growth. Worryingly for Eurozone exporters, the export orders index of the Eurozone manufacturing purchasing managers' survey points to activity contracting appreciably in recent months which reflects soft global demand as well as reduced intra-Eurozone trade. While the rate of decline eased to a six-month low in October, it was still marked.

10.47 On the data front, it's a mixed bag this morning:

The eurozone's current account surplus sunk to ?800m in September from ?10.9bn in August, according to the ECB.

The measure includes imports and exports in both goods and services plus all other current transfers, and tracks the ability of a country or area to pay its way in the world.

Meanwhile, the eurozone recorded a trade surplus of ?9.8bn in September, following at ?5.2bn surplus in August, although this was mainly due to countries importing fewer goods, rather than an export boom.

September exports fell by 1.1pc on a monthly basis, while imports were down 2.7pc, according to Eurostat.

10.30 On the subject of "legacy risks", Mr Weidmann said that countries should deal with past problems, because they created them.

10.23 Speaking of angry Germans, Jens Weidmann, the head of Germany's central bank, has warned that putting the ECB in charge of eurozone bank supervision risks compromising its primary goal of price stability.

Writing in German daily Handelsblatt, Mr Weidmann warned that forming a "hasty" bank union would be counterproductive, and that leaders should opt for "thoroughness over speed".

Mr Weidmann also said that a union would require a mechanism to wind down and restructure banks that should be funded by the lenders themselves.

10.12 Angry Germans have filed a lawsuit at the European Court of Justice in an attempt to block the European Central Bank's latest plan to buy-up the debt of struggling countries.

Around 4,800 people are represented by the lawsuit, filed by German protest group Zivile Koalition e.V., which claims that the ECB?s OMT programme violates the central bank?s own statutes and has an "immediate influence on monetary stability in the euro area".

For the German speakers among you, you can find out more about the Zivile Koalition here.

Beatrix von Storch, the group?s spokeswoman, has even put together this video message.

The press office of the EU court in Luxembourg declined to comment to Bloomberg.

10.02 More from BoA:

For both the current cycle and the longer-term, we think the economic outlook is more favourable in France, compared to Italy and Spain. Structurally, France is endowed with a larger potential output than Spain and Italy, and even Germany.

For France, a highly educated workforce and strong innovation is helpful. France also has a much stronger and dynamic demography compared to Germany, Italy and Spain, which is a long-term benefit. Overall, therefore, both demographics and the firm structure of the economy suggest that France will likely keep higher trend growth than Italy and Spain over the next five to ten years, in our view.

The bottom line, in our view, is that France?s growth outlook remains fundamentally higher than that for Italy and Spain. However, with the country lagging behind Spain and Italy in the reform process, we see the potential for markets to remain nervous on the fate of France, and for volatility to remain potentially high.

09.52 So how bad are things in France? According to analysts at Bank of America, there are good and bad parts, but nothing ugly - yet.

In a note today, Laurence Boone and her team highlight that although France is more like Germany than Spain and Italy, the country's bloated public sector is currently "impeding" the economy:

France?s performance has been fairly measured in the current cycle, with the trough of the recession being more muted than for other euro zone countries, especially Germany, but the rebound also remaining on the modest side. This reflects the combination of France?s economic strengths and weaknesses. On the one hand a large public sector and tightly regulated labour market provide an efficient cushion in a downturn, but also act as a brake on growth in a rebound.

However, the large presence of the public sector in all aspects of the economy, along with high labour costs and costly labour regulation, impede performance in France (Chart 15).

_{French public spending is among the highest in Europe (Source: BoA Merrill Lynch)}

09.46 The report itself is well worth a read. Here's an extract:

France still has many strengths, but its weaknesses have been laid bare by the euro crisis. For years it has been losing competitiveness to Germany and the trend has accelerated as the Germans have cut costs and pushed through big reforms. Without the option of currency devaluation, France has resorted to public spending and debt. Even as other EU countries have curbed the reach of the state, it has grown in France to consume almost 57% of GDP, the highest share in the euro zone. Because of the failure to balance a single budget since 1981, public debt has risen from 22% of GDP then to over 90% now.

The business climate in France has also worsened. French firms are burdened by overly rigid labour- and product-market regulation, exceptionally high taxes and the euro zone?s heaviest social charges on payrolls. Not surprisingly, new companies are rare. France has fewer small and medium-sized enterprises, today?s engines of job growth, than Germany, Italy or Britain. The economy is stagnant, may tip into recession this quarter and will barely grow next year. Over 10% of the workforce, and over 25% of the young, are jobless. The external current-account deficit has swung from a small surplus in 1999 into one of the euro zone?s biggest deficits. In short, too many of France?s firms are uncompetitive and the country?s bloated government is living beyond its means.

This feature by John Peet is also worth reading.

09.35 A bit of controversy surrounding France this morning. The fuss is over this:

...which French PM Jean-Marc Ayrault described last night as the newspaper "resorting to excess" to boost sales.

He added: "I can tell you that France is not at all impressed."

Yesterday, France's finance minister insisted that the country was not the "sick man of Europe", adding that the measures that the country was taking would restore the country's competitiveness on the global stage. Pierre Moscovici told the Financial Times (?):

No, we are not implementing the same reforms as Italy and Spain because we are not Italy or Spain. We don?t have the same weaknesses. So we will implement reforms ? la Fran?aise. They will be more ambitious than any [French government] before us.

09.10 The protesters were from the Freedom from Debt Coalition, which organised a demonstration in solidarity with people in the eurozone.

09.08 Here's how some of the locals greeted Ms Lagarde:

_{Activists wear zombie masks while holding placards to condemn the visit of IMF Managing Director Lagarde during a protest in Manila on Friday (Photo: Reuters).}

09.05 Next week's meeting of eurozone finance ministers will be crucuial to getting Greece "back on its feet", IMF chief Christine Lagarde has said. She told a press conference in Manila:

You know, it's not over until the fat lady sings, as the saying goes. It's a question of working hard, putting our mind to it, making sure that we focus on the same objective, which is that... Greece can operate on a sustainable basis, can recover, can get back on its feet, can re-access markets as early as possible. That is what is driving the IMF's determination.

Eurozone leaders will meet next Tuesday to discuss progress in Greece. The meeting will pave the way for the payment of its next bail-out tranche, although it still needs to be approved by national governments - mainly Germany.

On Monday, Ms Lagarde openly disagreed with Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the Eurogroup of finance ministers, over a critical target for reducing Greek debt levels.

The EU wants to give Greece an extra two years to meet its debt reduction target of 120pc of GDP by 2022 instead of 2020. The IMF doesn't.

The 2020 ?debt sustainability? target was a condition for the IMF?s involvement in the second Greek bail-out.

_{Christine Lagarde (C) waves to photographers as she boards her car after a press conference at Malacanang Palace in Manila (Photo: AFP).}

08.50 Good morning and welcome to another day of live coverage of Europe's debt crisis.

Source: http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/579300/s/25a4f85a/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Cfinance0Cdebt0Ecrisis0Elive0C96815670CDebt0Ecrisis0Elive0Bhtml/story01.htm

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