Where Does the ECB Go From Here?
I once congratulated Mario Draghi on his performance as president of the European Central Bank, telling him he had made only one mistake. “What’s that?” came the instant question. “Taking the job,” I replied.
My point was that by the time Draghi was appointed, the ECB could no longer hope to be a conventional central bank, if indeed it ever had been. Instead it had to serve as a highly political organization, compelled to stand in for the absent finance ministry of an incomplete political union. That’s an assignment no unelected central banker should relish.
Markets believed Draghi’s vow made in 2012 (ironically, at a conference to promote investment in Britain) that “the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro.” Investors’ confidence in that commitment, bolstered by the statements of the German chancellor and French president the following day, was partly self-fulfilling: Because they believed Draghi’s promise, it was never actually tested. Such confidence is always more fragile than it looks.
Extract from the Original article by Mervyn King , in Bloomberg View .
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