The great debt dance

International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn has given Spain a shot of reassurance: Spain has no need of an international financial rescue, according to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). "I don’t believe that the Spanish government needs any type of financial aid," he said in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais. ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn has given Spain a shot of reassurance:

International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn has given Spain a shot of reassurance:

Spain has no need of an international financial rescue, according to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

"I don’t believe that the Spanish government needs any type of financial aid," he said in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais.

The comments will be seen as a vote of confidence that austerity measures imposed by Madrid could be working.

Strauss-Kahn was at pains to distinguish the Greek and Spanish debt situations, which is good because there is growing evidence that a Greek restructuring is inevitable. At this point, all signs suggest that European leaders and IMF officials are quietly preparing the ground for a Greek restructuring, and trying to ensure that the spillover effects from it are minimal. 

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

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