Putin says little role for BRICS in euro crisis

Thursday, 13 October 2011 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Putin hails France, Germany euro bank support plan as “positive signal”
Says US is taking “parasitic” advantage of dollar dominance

By Gleb Bryanski

BEIJING (Reuters): Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that the crisis-hit euro zone had enough resources to resolve its own troubles without support from Russia and fellow BRICs countries.

As concern rise over weak growth and plunging stock markets, officials from the so-called BRICs emerging economies, including heavyweights China, Brazil and India, have floated plans to support Europe by using their currency reserves to buy bonds and help solve the euro area debt crisis.

But Putin’s comments were a reminder of scepticism over the plan in Russia -- holder of the world’s third largest gold and foreign exchange reserves, which has over two-fifths of its $517 billion in foreign reserves invested in euro-zone sovereign debt. “The big European economies have enough resources to resolve their own problems,” Putin said, while welcoming a plan by Germany and France to recapitalise Europe’s troubled banks as a “positive signal.”

“I do not think that the BRICs countries can play any particular kind of role,” Putin said in an interview with Chinese state media during a visit to Beijing.

Putin, who has announced plans to return to the presidency in 2012, also hinted that U.S. Federal Reserves’ purchases of treasuries were “bad” for the country’s fiscal discipline, saying the United States was profiting from the dollar’s “monopoly” as the main reserve currency.

“The Federal Reserve is buying treasuries, that is simply printing money. I do not want to make any judgements, maybe our American colleagues know better, but in the past that is not how they advised us to behave,” Putin said.

Asked to clarify his statement this summer describing the United States as a “parasite” on the global economy, Putin said:

“I did not say that America is being parasitic on the world economy. America is being parasitic with the dollar’s monopoly position,” Putin said.