Now For Some Real Medicine

Paul Krugman has on occassion suggested ironically that Bagdad was only for the boys, that the ‘real men’ would go to Teheran. Well here’s another of those ‘real men’ in the economics field: Paul Betts writing in the FT, with one of those delicious ‘wingnut’ arguments:

“A dose of sado-monetary policy from the European Central Bank could force long overdue structural reform in Europe. Rather than follow Sweden’s example by cutting interest rates, the ECB should consider pushing them higher.

Politicians, especially in Berlin and Paris, would hate it. Wolfgang Clement, Germany’s finance minister, applauded the Swedish decision as showing how a central bank could support general economic policy without upsetting its price stability strategy.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 23rd, 2005 at 8:05 am and is filed under A Few Euros More, Economics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

1. khr Says:
   June 24th, 2005 at 1:21 pm

   And not just politicians. Bank Analysts in Europe also suggest that interest rates should be reduced:

   http://ftd.de/bm/ma/11436.html

   But don’t fear, the ECB already is arguing that no rate cut is needed:
   http://ftd.de/bm/ma/11448.html