Sarkozy Threatened to Quit Euro in Showdown with Germany
May 14th, 2010Via: EUbusiness:
French President Nicolas Sarkozy threatened to pull his country out of the euro currency group to force Germany to help Greece with its debt crisis, El Pais newspaper reported Friday, quoting Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.
Sarkozy made the threat at a Brussels summit of EU leaders last Friday that sealed a rescue package, Zapatero told a meeting with leaders of his Socialist Party on Wednesday, the newspaper reported.
Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, has been the most reluctant euro nation to help the Greek government.
However the French president demanded “a commitment by everyone, for everyone to help Greece, each according to his means or France would reexamine its situation in the euro,” Zapatero was quoted as saying.
“Sarkozy banged his fist on the table and threatened to withdraw from the euro, which twisted the arm of Angela Merkel,” the German chancellor, a Socialist official who heard Zapatero’s account was quoted as saying.
The Brussels summit finally agreed a 110-billion-euro (140-billion-dollar) three-year package of loans and credit guarantees for Greece, which had risked defaulting on its huge debts.
Research Credit: dagobaz
It’s not the first time he has make threats.
Check Mike Shedlock essay “How Credible is French President Sarkozy’s Threat to Leave EU?” at
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/05/how-credible-is-french-president.html
I’ve long had a page on Wilhelm Reich on hermes-press.com bookmarked, but if I’d explored the rest of the site, it was years ago. Tonight I did so and found this page
http://www.hermes-press.com/dollar_imperialism.htm
to be recent, and pertinent to this post.
It, and the overview/background context it extols, may easily be not new material to cryptogon readers and perhaps shouldn’t have been to me, but it was.