June 20, 2011
That’s what readers must be thinking of an NYT piece on the changes Greece needs to make in order to restore economic growth. The piece never mentions the European Central Bank (ECB).
The ECB is an incredibly important force, either promoting or constraining growth. It is currently doing the latter. It set its overnight interest rate at 1.25 percent. This is higher than the 1.0 percent rate set by the Fed from 2002 to 2004 when the U.S. economy was trying to recover from the stock market crash. It is generally expected to raise its rate further over the course of the year.
By contrast, if the ECB was interested in promoting growth in Greece and elsewhere in the euro zone, it could push its short-term rate to zero, like the Fed. It could also target a 3-4 percent inflation rate to reduce real interest rates further and lesson the debt burden on governments and households across the euro zone.
This path has been advocated in various contexts by Olivier Blanchard, the IMF’s chief economist, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke, and Nobel prize winning economist and NYT columnist Paul Krugman. Reporters who write about what is necessary for Greece to grow should be familiar with this argument.
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