Balls Says IMF Not Substitute for ECB, Daily Telegraph Reports

Ed Balls, finance spokesman for the U.K.’s opposition Labour Party, said the International Monetary Fund shouldn’t become a substitute for the European Central Bank during the euro-region crisis, the Daily Telegraph reported.

Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, a Conservative who offered 10 billion pounds ($16.1 billion) to the IMF in Washington, shouldn’t give it “a single extra penny,” Balls told the paper. Austerity in Southern Europe isn’t working and deficits can’t go down without growth, he told the newspaper.

While the ECB and the euro region doesn’t have “the capacity” to deal with Italy’s and Spain’s issues “it would be wrong to ask the global taxpayer to put up” the money, the Telegraph cited him as saying.

To contact the reporter on this story: Erik Larson in London at elarson4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net