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Creditors soften stance on Greece

There appeared to be a softening in stance from Greece’s creditors over the weekend, with both the IMF and Germany insinuating that the struggling nation should be given more time to meet its obligations. The German Chancellor Angel Merkel’s used terms such as “assistance” and “support” in her weekly podcast, during which she also suggested progress was being made in lowering debt level. Further, the IMF’s Lagarde admitted that too much austerity in Greece could negatively affect the credibility of the bailout plan. The shift comes ahead of an EU summit at the end of the week with the focus of the meeting in Brussels likely to be on Greece, Spain and a possible banking union.

Other positives included better than expected Chinese export data over the weekend, and US retail sales today that rose 1.1% in September, well ahead of the 0.6% that was anticipated by economists. Equity markets were broadly higher although gains were unspectacular, with the FTSE 100 closing 0.3% higher at 5809.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by James .