The IMF, the Eurozone and the First Rescue of Greece

Blustein will discuss his research on the secret negotiations between International Monetary Fund (IMF) staffers and German and French finance ministries officials on the Greek debt crisis in the spring of 2010.

While many independent analysts believed a restructuring was inevitable because the country’s debt burden appeared unsustainable, the “Troika” attempted to resolve the crisis by giving Athens bailout loans of unprecedented magnitude, piling debt a top debt. Though Greece would eventually received the largest debt relief in history in 2012, the rescue effort would go terribly awry, with consequences that continue to reverberate today as the euro area struggles with weak growth. Blustein’s research tells the story of the first Greek rescue based on interviews with dozens of key participants as well as both public and private IMF documents. 

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CES A Center-Periphery Perspectives From Southern Europe

Speaker: Paul Blustein

Contact: rcc@harvard.edu

Sponsor: RCC, A Center-Periphery Europe? Perspectives from Southern Europe Study Group