6:13PM GMT 13 Jan 2012
The world according to Goldman Sachs
By Kamal AHMED, Sunday Telegraph Business Editor
"How do you solve a problem like Europe?
There's a radio advert running in New York selling cheap financing for cars. In it, an ebullient salesman demands to know why a country with an economy the size of Indiana – Greece – is causing a global economic meltdown. "If Indiana said it had a debt problem would the world leaders be quaking in their boots? I don't think so," he bellows. Forget about it, and get a good loan deal instead because interest rates are really low.
Cohn admits he has moved significantly on the dangers of a eurozone break-up. Two to three years ago, he felt the currency could flounder. Now, after a year where European politicians have battled the markets to keep the project on course, he says the threat of break-up is more evenly balanced.
I ask Cohn whether, at the end of the year 2011 compared with the beginning of the year, he is more or less confident about the chances of the euro surviving with all its members.
"I am probably about equally confident," he answers.
"It's funny, if you had asked me that two or three years ago, then I didn't think the euro could survive. Last year was a test where there could have been some situations where it just didn't work. People could have easily thrown in the towel, but I think the conviction to keep the euro together is very strong. I think over the course of last year if anything it got stronger. It is very, very difficult to break it apart."
Cohn once wondered whether some of the peripheral countries might fall out of the bottom of the currency. He then considered whether Germany and other, more strongly financed nations, might "pop out" of the top. "Then you realise none of that is going to work. I'm in the mode where I think the euro is going to last." He pauses, and laughs. "Until it doesn't".
The eurozone will ultimately, Cohn argues, have to look to the ECB. "The solution has to come from the ECB," he says. "At the end of the day that is the central bank of Europe. That is the entity that can CREATE more CURRENCY, more EUROS"...
SOURCE / LINK / QUELLE dieses Ausschnitts aus dem Goldman-SACHS-Interview:
www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/...Goldman-Sachs.html
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