Trichet: Institutions functioned in Greek crisis (by William L. Watts)

LONDON (MarketWatch) -- European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet repeated Thursday that the central bank's Governing Council welcomed the additional austerity measures announced by Greece a day earlier. In his monthly news conference in Frankfurt, Trichet said European Union institutions "have functioned" and performed their jobs in the midst of the Greek debt crisis. He repeated that the idea of Greece or any other country leaving the euro zone was an "absurd hypothesis."