Former Spanish PM To Publish European Crisis Memoir

It was just before the start of a Group of 20 economic summit described at the time as make-or-break for the 17-nation euro zone, and only weeks before a Spanish general election.

“She greeted me pleasantly and almost without any introduction put forward a proposal about which we had not had any indication,” Zapatero writes in a book to be published on Tuesday in Spain.

“Merkel asked me if I was willing to ask for a preventive credit line of 50 billion euros from the IMF, while another 85 billion euros would go to Italy,” he said.

“My response was also direct and clear: ‘No’.”

Merkel accepted his answer and leaders then exerted far greater pressure on Italy to take a bailout, hoping this would halt a spreading crisis that had erupted in Greece.

Zapatero, who stepped down before his Socialist party suffered a landslide election defeat that month, is the first European leader of the time to publish a memoir on the crisis that nearly broke the euro zone in 2010-12 and still smoulders.

via Reuters

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency
trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza