ECB tucks away Greece documents
The European Central Bank refused yesterday to disclose internal documents showing how the Greek government used derivatives to hide its government debt because of the «acute» risk of shaky markets, ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet said. The ECB turned down a request and an appeal by Bloomberg News to release two briefing documents officials drafted for the central bank’s six-member executive board in Frankfurt this year. The notes outline how Greece used the swaps to hide its borrowing, according to a March 3 note attached to the papers and obtained by Bloomberg News. «The information contained in the two documents would undermine the public confidence as regards the effective conduct of economic policy,» Trichet wrote in a letter in which he rejected the appeal.