Economist
May 10, 2010
AT two in the morning on May 10th, European Union finance ministers agreed a huge increase in their political will to defend Europe's single currency, backed by a stunning €750 billion in aid for weak links in the 16 member eurozone. Simultaneously, the European Central Bank took a revolutionary shift away from its inflation-fighting mission, announcing a scheme to buy up government bonds on the financial markets.
That new sense of resolve is good news. The more troubling news is that it took 11 hours of bitter wrangling to get the ministers to that point, and—thanks to continued German anxiety about undermining eurozone discipline by bailing out the profligate—there will be three separate mechanisms to deliver that €750 billion, of such fiendish complexity that EU officials are still not quite sure how it will all work. In a nice irony, the ministers—who have spent weeks denouncing financial markets as wicked speculators—only stopped arguing and agreed a plan in the early hours of this morning because they knew markets were about to open in Asia, well-informed sources say.
More
No comments:
Post a Comment