Brazil on Thursday expressed support for the IMF latest aid package for Greece, disavowing its IMF delegate who abstained in a vote on the issue. Finance Minister Guido Mantega spoke with IMF chief Christine Lagarde and backed the Fund's decision to release 1.7 billion Euros in rescue loans to ailing Greece Monday, his spokesman said.
A group of Latin American countries refused to back an IMF move this week to keep bankrolling Greece, citing risks of non-repayment, and the Fund itself said Athens might need faster debt relief from Europe.
Greeks and Spaniards are moving to northern Europe in growing numbers, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said this week, as soaring unemployment rates and fiscal austerity erode living standards in the south.
The International Monetary Fund admitted it had to lower its normal standards for debt sustainability to bail out Greece, and its projections for the Greek economy may have been overly optimistic.
Unemployment in the Euro zone reached a new high of 11.9% in January, as an additional 201,000 people joined the jobless ranks in the crisis-battered bloc, latest data showed Friday. The unemployment rate has been increasing relentlessly since the middle of 2011.
The European Union reached a landmark deal on Thursday to make the European Central Bank the bloc's top banking supervisor, giving EU leaders greater confidence that they are gaining the upper hand over the Euro zone's debt crisis.
The IMF on Thursday backed giving debt-burdened Greece and Spain more time to reduce their budget deficits, cautioning that cutting too far, too fast would do more harm than good.
Greek nationals have deposited overseas an estimate 261 billion dollars from illegal activities, from tax evasion and elusion to criminal actions or simple from rampant corruption, according to economist and head of the Non Government Organization, Global Financial Integrity, Raymond Baker.
Only about a quarter of ordinary Germans are in favor of debt-stricken Greece remaining in the Euro area, a poll published by the Financial Times on Monday indicated. It revealed strong reluctance to grant Greece yet another bailout installment.
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble warned Greece in a newspaper interview Monday that it must redouble efforts to comply with bailout conditions imposed by international creditors. If there were delays, Greece must make up for them, he told the daily Bild.