Obama: Europe has cronic wound but the euro will survive

“I don’t think ultimately that the Europeans will let the Euro unravel, but they are going to have to take some decisive steps,” US President Barack Obama said in a fundraiser event Monday night held in a New York high end hotel.

barack obamaOnly four months before the U.S. election, Euro worries are inevitably playing a major role on this side of the Atlantic. Any worsening in the Euro zone situation will knock the American economy. No matter how much money political action committees are funneling into campaign ads, both Mr. Obama and his Republican rival Mitt Romney know it’s going to be a close election and that their bids are threatened by high U.S. unemployment and a weak recovery. The country’s growth slowed in the second quarter to a 1.5 percent annual rate, the weakest pace in a year, according to government estimates.

“We’re going to have some continued headwinds over the next several months,” Mr. Obama said. “Europe is still a challenge (…) and I am spending an enormous amount of time trying to work with them. The sooner that they take some decisive action, the better off we are going to be.”

For months Mr. Obama has been urging European leaders to ease up on fiscal austerity and focus on growth. However, some experts point out that a further deterioration of the euro skirmishing may be good for him, giving him the chance to play the role of the big statesman, welcoming any emergency liquidity-boosting action by the Fed, Bank of England, ECB and People’s Bank of China (actions that do not depend on him actually) and taking advantage of a strong dollar in the short term.

About the Author

Ana Fuentes
Columnist for El País and a contributor to SER (Sociedad Española de Radiodifusión), was the first editor-in-chief of The Corner. Currently based in Madrid, she has been a correspondent in New York, Beijing and Paris for several international media outlets such as Prisa Radio, Radio Netherlands or CNN en español. Ana holds a degree in Journalism from the Complutense University in Madrid and the Sorbonne University in Paris, and a Master's in Journalism from Spanish newspaper El País.

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