U.S. President Barack Obama suggested to Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis that Greece should show flexibility in the negotiations with creditors in order to avoid a financial “accident.”
Varoufakis spoke to the Greek press saying that he discussed the economic crisis with the U.S. President and the two men exchanged experiences in dealing with such crises.
According to Varoufakis, Obama spoke about his experience with the U.S. economic crisis when he first took office, when he had to deal with austerity policies that he had to fight against.
“We compared our experiences, which are similar and very different at the same time. We exchanged some ideas about what this means for Greece in relation to the difficulties he had,” said Varoufakis, adding that Obama had “to manage the big difficulties Wall Street had faced, while we had the problems caused by the Memorandum, which was essentially the taxpayers of Greece and the Eurozone shouldering private losses.”
According to Varoufakis, the two men agreed that there should be practical ways to avoid destabilization and that both negotiating sides should show flexibility. He also said that Obama expressed his support to Greece and assured that the cooperation between the two countries will continue. “He didn’t come to shake his finger at us, to tell us what to do,” Varoufakis said describing the tone of the conversation.
Regarding the negotiations with creditors, Varoufakis told reporters that “We should stay focused on our goals in our negotiations with the IMF, the ECB and the EC. It would be good to have some outside help on that.”
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