Eurozone stagnations.....

Europe projects an image of “ongoing conflict” between national governments and the central bank, hampering efforts to put the economy on a sounder footing, Geithner said at a banking conference in between euro meetings.


“Your financial challenges in Europe are eminently in your capacity to manage financially, you just have to choose to do it,” he said.

Echoes of that appeal came from ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet, six weeks from the end of an eight-year term as the overseer of euro interest rates.

“Our permanent message is of course to be ahead of the curve,” Trichet told reporters. “All that I heard goes in this direction. But the problems are not words, the problems are deeds.”

The ECB was in the forefront again this week, joining other major central banks in offering dollar loans to ease a liquidity crunch that had confronted European banks with the highest costs for obtaining the U.S. currency in almost three years.

Finance chiefs stuck by the view that commercial banks have enough capital to ride out the turbulence that has driven the bonds of Greece, the epicenter of the crisis, to less than half their nominal value.

Trichet hailed an accord between governments and the European Parliament that will tighten the euro area’s economic management and make it easier to impose sanctions on countries that overstep the budget-deficit limit of 3 percent of gross domestic product.

The new rules, to take effect by Jan. 1, mark a “substantial improvement,” Trichet said.