As European officials headed into a long weekend of critical talks over Greece’s crippling debt crisis, the European Union and theInternational Monetary Fund said Thursday that they were confident of a deal to secure a vital 12-billion-euro ($17 billion) portion of the outside aid needed to stave off an imminent Greek default.
The comments, reflecting belated advances in negotiations that have been going on for weeks, were aimed at calming anxious financial markets and preventing a Greek default from setting off another financial crisis. The fear is that could threaten the integrity of the euro zone, require European countries to bail out banks that lent heavily to Greece and other deeply indebted countries, and spread panic across global markets.
After a drop in U.S. markets on Wednesday that was compounded by fresh fears about the pace of the American economic recovery, stocks turned mixed in New York, with the Dow Jones industrial average slightly higher and broader indexes lower. The euro slipped further, Asian and European stocks faltered and the interest that investors demanded to buy bonds of the more indebted European countries climbed.
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The New York Times
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