A statement was issued by Merkel and Sarkozy yesterday.
As translated by the Financial Times, it read:
The President and German Chancellor spoke today by telephone to prepare the European dates in the coming days.
The President and the Chancellor have agreed to provide a comprehensive and ambitious global response to the current crisis in the euro area.
This response will include the following:
– The operational implementation of new forms of intervention EFSF.
– A plan to strengthen the capital of European banks.
– The implementation of the economic governance of the euro area and the strengthening of economic integration.For a lasting solution to the situation in Greece, the Greek authorities will have to make ambitious commitments to address the situation of their economies as part of a new program. Based on the report of the troika and the analysis of debt sustainability Greece, France and Germany call for immediately undertake negotiations with the private sector to reach an agreement for strengthening sustainability.
The President and the Chancellor will meet Saturday night in Brussels ahead of the European Council summit in the euro area on Sunday. France and Germany have agreed that all elements of this ambitious and comprehensive response will be discussed in depth at the summit on Sunday in order to be finally adopted by the Heads of State and Government at a second meeting no later than Wednesday.”
As I said to our Members in Chat (we went bullish on the news, of course) – could they possibly be more clear in their statement Well, apparently they should have been because the interpretation of this statement, as headlined in the WSJ, was as follows:
Disagreement between Germany and France over virtually every point in a plan to resolve the euro-zone debt crisis forced Merkel and Sarkozy to concede that a summit of EU leaders Sunday won’t produce an agreement.
And that’s what moved the markets yesterday. Fortunately, we have learned to ignore almost everything printed in the Wall Street Journal or any other Murdoch-owned publication and, of course, it goes without saying that if any news is being broadcast on Fox, there’s probably another side to the story that is true.
Still, the Wall Street Journal manages to have not squandered all of…
