The Bursting of Europe’s Bubble

Abstract

The monetary policies on both sides of the Atlantic responsible for creating and spreading a powerful virus of asset price inflation through 2003–7 and then for adding to the economic and human suffering when the disease progressed to its ultimate phase characterized by steep falls in speculative temperatures (market crashes) may not have fully satisfied the definition of catastrophic. But how far short they were of that benchmark will doubtless long remain a matter for heated debate.