The email sent will contain a link to this article, the article title, and an article excerpt (if available). For security reasons, your IP address will also be included in the sent email.
The European Central Bank is responsible for the wreckage that has overtaken the Eurozone, economist says.
Dean Baker
Al-Jazeera, 01 Nov 2011 09:04
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/11/2011111815133102.html
In the last month, people from around the country and around the world have picked up on the Occupy Wall Street theme of retaking the country from the wealthy. Insofar as this sentiment gathers force in Europe, there is probably no place better for people to plant themselves than on the steps of the European Central Bank (ECB).
More than any other institution, the ECB is responsible for the economic wreckage that has overtaken the European economy. In the years when housing bubbles were building across the much of the eurozone and the United States, the ECB looked the other way. Its position at the time was that these bubbles and the huge imbalances they created were not its concern. Its concern was keeping the inflation rate at two per cent.
This single-minded obsession with the inflation rate, at a time when the economies of the eurozone and the world were on the edge of disaster, is akin to Kodak insisting that its business line was photographic film at a time when digital photography was exploding. Competent business people adjust their business plans when the world changes. In the same vein, competent central bankers reorder their priorities when the economic situation requires changes.
Return to Article