Guilty Verdict on the European Central Bank

Abstract

It is time to ‘give the floor’ to what the leading officials in the project of EMU have said and continue to say in its defence (or more aptly, in trumpeting its success). A ready-made early brief on their behalf came from Stephen Cecchetti and Kermit Schoenholtz and was published in late 2008. These authors (the first was Economic Adviser and Head of the Monetary and Economics Department at the BIS, the second is professor at Stern School of Business, New York University) conducted a series of 17 extended interviews between June 2007 and February 2008 with a range of current and former high officials at the ECB, and with other policymakers and scholars who viewed the evolution of the ECB from privileged vantage points outside the institution.