Europe tells US to mind its own business
Europe hit back Saturday at US lecturing over its public finances and debt record, insisting the eurozone was better off than comparable global rivals.
"Taken as a whole, it is probably better than other major advanced economies," European Central Bank chief Jean-Claude Trichet said at the close of talks in Poland among European Union finance ministers.
Discussions were marred on Friday by a spat with guest US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who prodded the eurozone to take quick action.
As more than 12,000 workers from around Europe swarmed the streets of Wroclaw to protest against EU-ordered austerity, Trichet described the medium-term prospects as "quite encouraging if you compare with other major advanced economies."
He tipped a combined year-end, annual deficit of 4.5 percent of Gross Domestic Product -- whereas the United States expects its public deficit to reach 8.8 percent this year.
By the time you factor in "superior" cumulative debt levels elsewhere, Trichet said the overall eurozone outlook was therefore not as endangered as some others.
Credit rating giant Standard & Poor's stunned leaders when it downgraded the US long-term credit rating last month.
Even before sparring with Geithner on Friday, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble had highlighted the United States as carrying the world's heaviest debt burden.
And that was despite a new plan to chop at least $1.2 trillion (870 billion euros) over 10 years off the runaway total logged on an infamous Times Square debt clock in New York City.
Trichet added that "mistakes made" by "individual countries" in the eurozone, led by Greece with creditors sweating over some 360 billion euros and counting, are "being corrected."
Hosts Poland, which holds current EU presidency, took the decision to invite Geithner, in a sign of spiralling global concerns.
"Governments and central banks need to take out the catastrophic risk to markets," Geithner said in Wroclaw, although Washington later denied he was writing "prescriptions" for Europe.
Geithner urged eurozone leaders to bolster a 440-billion-euro rescue fund for troubled member states, but saw that demand instantly rebuffed by Schaeuble.
Germany instead demanded Washington drop its opposition to a wished-for global financial transactions tax -- "emphatically" resisted by Geithner, according to Austria's Maria Fekter.
"Yes, it's better to organise something on financial transactions on the worldwide level, but it's impossible," Belgian Finance Minister Didier Reynders said on Saturday.
"We will do that within the European Union, and maybe also if it's impossible for the entire EU in the eurozone," he added.
Europeans have sought to implement either a tax on profits or turnover from the financial sector since governments were forced to bail out banks caught up in the 2008 credit crunch that started in the United States.
Polish Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski said the internal EU debate "raised a lot of emotions" and outlined "considerable divisions."
But Schaeuble said after the talks closed that he is no longer "that pessimistic," adding "the arguments are changing."
EU financial services commissioner Michel Barnier maintained that such a tax was "simple" to install, "liveable with" for the financial sector and "politically just," as the EU executive readies new proposals for lawmakers in the coming weeks.
Ministers from the 27 EU states cut short their last day of talks in the southwestern Polish city before the protesters' planned march.
At the talks, eurozone nations decided to postpone until October a decision on whether to hand over the next tranche of an agreed emergency loan package to Greece -- the eurozone member in the eye of the debt storm -- worth eight billion euros.
Renewed aid for Greece, after an earlier bailout proved insufficient, has been mired in rows with Finland over its demand for collateral for loan guarantees, and with Slovakia which has threatened to delay parliamentary ratification.
"We have to continue the negotiations," Finland's Finance Minister Jutta Urpilainen said. Asked if there had been progress, she responded: "There's nothing new."