By Agence France-Presse
Tokyo--Jan. 15--A soft landing for the U.S. economy is in the interests of both the country and the new Bush administration which has to spare the rest of the world the impact of a recession, two European finance ministers said in Tokyo Monday. "A hard landing of the U.S. economy, means this is a bad situation for all of us--we are all interested in a soft landing," said Germany's Hans Eichel in a joint press conference with his French counterpart, Laurent Fabius.
* * * "I hope the policy of the Fed and of the new administration will preserve us from a hard landing."
"This is in the interests of the United States and of the new government too: this is the question of soft or hard landing we have been discussing for a year and a half," the German minister added.
The two were repeating the message they took to the two-day meeting of ASEM finance ministers in Kobe, central Japan at the weekend, that even though Europe's economy was "robust", it could still be appreciably slowed by a U.S. economic downturn.
"If it was a very important slowdown, it would have an effect on our growth," conceded Fabius.
"But if the effect of what's taking place in America remains reasonable, it will not be very important for Europe," he said pointing to the shift in the global economic picture over the last six months as the oil price has fallen back and the euro has staged a comeback.