In a shift away from European Central Bank orthodoxy, a senior bank executive has argued that even though the ECB’s monetary policy led to a decrease in labour income inequality, its asset purchase programs would lead to wealth inequality.
There is a lot of confusion about the fiscal implications of the government bond-buying programme – the OMT, or Outright Monetary Transactions – that the ECB announced last year.
ECB president Mario Draghi, however, has outdone himself. Even prior to candidate president François Hollande’s official proposal of a “Growth Compact”, the ECB president took over the initiative by offering his own version to the European Parliament. As could be expected, the ECB’s version of such a “Growth Compact” is based on the idea of structural labour market reforms, thereby making explicit reference to the German Hartz reforms.
Pour avoir sauvé les banques sans avoir imposé la moindre réforme, la Banque centrale européenne et les responsables politiques se trouvent pris au piège de leurs choix. Une fois de plus, le système bancaire a la priorité sur les citoyens européens.