When the US wants to talk about the eurozone, it telephones … the IMF

When the United States wants to talk to Europe about the eurozone debt crisis, who does it call?

Economist Jean Pisani-Ferry has discovered the answer to Henry Kissinger’s apocryphal question (“When I want to talk to Europe, what number do I call?”) by examining the published agenda and telephone records of US Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner.

Between January 2010, after the crisis erupted in Greece, and June 2012, Mr Geithner had 114 meetings and telephone calls with the head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn and his successor Christine Lagarde, and their deputies.

Over the same period, he had 58 contacts with the president of the European Central Bank, first Jean-Claude Trichet then Mario Draghi since November 2011.

National finance ministers came next: 36 contacts with Wolfgang Schaeuble in Germany, 32 with the French finance minister (three incumbents over the period), 19 with Britain’s Chancellor, and a handful of calls to counterparts in Spain, Italy, Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

Yet Geithner spoke only once to Jean-Claude Juncker, the chairman of eurozone finance ministers who was once touted as “Mr Euro”.