Italian PM Says Greek Bailout Flawed

Visiting Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta said after a meeting in Athens with Prime Minister Antonis Samaras that the bailout program pout together by the country’s international lenders would have caused less of a “financial disaster,” if administered better, even as the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB0 agreed this week to release a combined 5.7 billion euros ($7.55 billion) in ongoing installments.
The package includes the IMF’s share of 1.7 billion euros ($2.25 billion) which the organization released shortly after Germany’s parliamentary budget committee also cleared the way for Athens to receive 2.5 billion euros ($3.31 billion) from the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF). Greece will get another 1.5 billion euros ($1.98 billion) from Eurozone central banks giving up their profits from buying Greek bonds on the secondary market.
The money will go into a special account at the Bank of Greece, from where some 2.2 billion euros ($2.91 billion) will be used to pay bonds that mature in three weeks. Athens is to receive another 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) in October if it carries out the “prior actions” demanded by the Troika.
The money is part of a second bailout of $173 billion that, like a first for $152 billion that has been spent, has failed to make much of a debt in the country’s $390 billion debt and deficit that still lingers three times above the Eurozone ceiling of 3 percent.
Letta questioned the way the Greek bailout had been structured, suggesting its poor design had heightened the impact of the crisis on the Eurozone economy. “The timing was wrong,” he said.
“The instruments were wrong. The interventions were not made in the right way and at the right time and this worsened the crisis.” Despite that, the Troika is holding to harsh austerity measures that have worsened Greece’s six-year recession and created a record unemployment rate.
Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, with whom Letta held talks, didn’t jump into the conversation about the Troika as he has to do its bidding and insisted Greece should stick to its plan of producing a primary surplus as quickly as possible so it would not have to rely on Eurozone and IMF loans.
“I do not want to get into this,” he said. “Our top goal remains to achieve a primary surplus, not because we are being forced to do so but because we can cease borrowing and return to growth.”
Samaras and Letta said that Greece and Italy would coordinate their efforts for next year’s rotating EU Presidency. Greece will have the seat  between January and June, at the end of which Italy will take over. “We have decided to have a common agenda so the two six-month terms become a full year of priorities,” said Samaras.
The two men said the key themes would be growth, social welfare and irregular immigration. The EU Presidency is a symbolic office with virtually no powers to do anything.