Jürgen Stark is starkly ignorant about monetary policy

From The Telegraph:

According to Jürgen Stark, a former board member of the European Central Bank (ECB), it is not just “misguided” but “irresponsible” to be warning about the threat of deflation in Europe. Instead, he invites us to shut up about it altogether, for “the longer this discussion continues, and the more intense it becomes, the more likely the risk of a self-fulfilling prophecy”.

Let’s just close down the debate, he seems to be saying, because we policy-makers know better. The evidence of the past three years, it has to be said, strongly suggests otherwise.

While European policy-makers remain trapped in arguments over who pays for failed banks and insolvent states, the real problem of how to get credit and growth going again is left unaddressed.

And Europe’s elite wonders why populist parties are doing so well. Monetary economics may be a complex and somewhat technical subject, but it seems that ordinary voters get the gist of it rather better than their rulers.

2 thoughts on “Jürgen Stark is starkly ignorant about monetary policy

  1. In the EU, lack of accountability is a feature, not a bug. If you claim that nationalism is the great problem of European history and define nationalism as a popular passion then blocking responsiveness to popular passion becomes “the solution”. Which is nonsense, the great problem of European history is unaccountable power, not “nationalism” as such.

    • The ECB is unaccountable, Lorenzo is right. A Spaniard who wants a more growth-oriented central bank votes how?

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.