Europe Faces Geithner, Soros Pressure to Defuse Debt Crisis

European policy makers faced mounting pressure from foreign counterparts and investors to step up efforts to prevent their sovereign debt crisis from further roiling the world’s financial markets and economy.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner set the tone at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund in Washington by warning that failure to combat the Greek-led turmoil threatened “cascading default, bank runs and catastrophic risk.” Billionaire investor George Soros said “something needs to be done” to safeguard Europe’s banks because Greece may be unable to avoid default.