Draghi Swipes at Bundesbank's 'No to Everything' Stance at ECB
Comment of the Day

September 25 2012

Commentary by David Fuller

Draghi Swipes at Bundesbank's 'No to Everything' Stance at ECB

This is an interesting item from Bloomberg News, posted by the San Francisco Chronicle and other papers. Here is the opening:
Sept. 25 (Bloomberg) -- European Central Bank President Mario Draghi defended his bond-purchase plan and took a swipe at Germany's Bundesbank, saying choosing to do nothing would have been dangerous.

"Either you do nothing -- nein zu Allem," or no to everything, and "allow the singleness of monetary policy to be undermined, or you take action," Draghi told an audience of German business people in Berlin today. "The greatest risk to stability is not action, it's inaction."

Draghi is seeking to sell his bond-buying plan to Germany after the Bundesbank openly opposed it, saying it's tantamount to printing money to finance profligate governments. Draghi said the ECB's commitment to lower borrowing costs is aimed solely at restoring transmission of its interest rates and has already boosted financial-market confidence.

"We have moved to ensure price stability by removing unfounded fears about the continuance of the euro area" and "there is no doubt that these measures are supporting financial market sentiment," Draghi said. However, "our measures can only build the bridge to a more stable future" and "the key challenge going forward is to ensure that this immediate upturn strengthens rather than weakens" governments' commitment to implement reforms, he said.

David Fuller's view Mario Draghi is winning this battle and that is certainly best for the euro and probably Euroland countries as well, if you agree that they would be better off in working to make the euro viable rather than ditching the single currency at this stage.

Jens Weidmann of the Bundesbank can take the moral high ground on monetary policy but neither this nor Dr Faust nor Mephistopheles is likely to change the current course, in my view (see also Emails 1 & 2 below for an explanation of these references).

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