With the largest ever bond-buying program by the European Central Bank looming, Bundesbankers were in an apprehensive mood when they gathered on January 13 for a commemorative ceremony to mark the passing of the Bundesbank’s former President Karl Otto Pöhl. Pöhl, who for decades served as a member of TIE’s editorial advisory board, passed away December 9, 2014, at the age of eighty-five.
For those present who are or were important to the institution, the huge quantitative easing program, pushed by the ECB’s President Mario Draghi on shaky legal and economic grounds, is feared to be the Bundesbank’s most damaging setback since the start of monetary union. In the long battle to block massive bond purchases from debt laden eurozone member states, the Bundesbank under its President Jens Weidmann is being forced to take part in the largest money printing experiment post-war Europe has experienced. No wonder one of Weidmann’s predecessors, Helmut Schlesinger, confessed in a recent interview that quantitative easing reminds him of “war financing.”
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