Steinbrueck: “Germany has not paid a single cent to Greece”. Not to mention the Profits…

Posted by keeptalkinggreece

German chancellor candidate  Peer Steinbrueck (SPD) warned in a newspaper interview released on Saturday that German taxpayers could get stuck with a large bill if Greece were to default on its loans.
Steinbrueck told Bild am Sonntag newspaper that Germany has so far only provided loan guarantees for Greece but that could end up costing German taxpayers billions of euros. He said the government should make that fact clear to the public at home.
“One must tell the people that Greece could default on these loans,” said Steinbrueck, who will lead the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) candidate against Chancellor Angela Merkel in next September’s federal election.
Steinbrueck said “so far Germany has not paid a single cent” to Greece but added it was quite possible that could change.

“We were ready to pay money for the costs of German reunification – something all of our neighbors welcomed despite the bad experiences they had had with us,” he said, referring to Germany’s Nazi past. “Now is time that we have to ask ourselves the question: what is Europe worth to us?”

Steinbrueck said that Greece will not be able to return to the capital markets for another eight years.

“We’re going to have to build a bridge for this period and that’s going to cost money,” Steinbrueck said.

According to a Reuters report based on data from German Finance Ministry, Germany gets a profit of 380 million euro per year from the interest rates Greece pays to Berlin for the loans.

The previous billions in aid for Greece have paid off for Germany. By the end of 2011, the government in Athens has paid 380 million euros for German loans interest rates, as can be seen, according to the Reuters news agency from a review of the Federal Ministry of Finance.
The German government has the first aid package for Greece granted loans totaling 15.17 billion euros to save the country from bankruptcy. The interest rate has, according to Reuters located here from 3.423 to 4.528 percent. Aid on May 2010 had. A total of 107 billion euros, of which 30 billion euros from the IMF and 77 billion euros will come from the other euro area countries

Taking into account that Greece sought the EU/IMF aid in May 2010, the profit for Germany would be a nice one billion euro  :)