May 09, 2012
That fact should have been mentioned in a NYT article that told readers, “few options if Europe turns from austerity.” If there were a political consensus within Europe to reject austerity, the euro zone countries could call Mario Draghi, the European Central Bank (ECB) president, and tell him that he must guarantee debt and run expansionary policy or look for a new job and surrender his pension. (Which is far more generous than the ones that were cut in Greece.)
This piece might wrongly lead readers to believe that the ECB could pursue policies that all the governments in the euro oppose. That is not true. If the governments all agreed that they wanted to reject austerity then they could require that the ECB support this position.
That would mean abandoning its obsession with defending its Maginot line (its 2.0 percent inflation target), but such is life.
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