George Osborne’s musings today on how Greece might have to leave the Eurozone before the Germans will act in order to save the single currency makes public the British government’s current thinking on the future of the Eurozone. In remarks the frankness of which have taken other parts of government by surprise, Osborne told The Times’s CEO summit:
Osborne’s logic here strikes me as correct and chimes with what you hear from both Brussels and diplomatic sources. But it is still significant to have the British Chancellor speculating so openly about a country being pushed out of the single currency. This, combined with his comments about how the Eurozone was warned that the Spanish bailout wouldn’t work, reveals just how frustrated he is with what is happening there.‘I ultimately don’t know whether Greece needs to leave the Euro in order for the eurozone to do the things necessary to make their currency survive… I just don’t know whether the German government requires Greek exit to explain to their public why they need to do certain things like a banking union, eurobonds and things in common with that. I would suspect that if you had a eurozone finance minister here, they wouldn’t really know the answer to that.’
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