In my opinion, Paul Grauwe’s and your points should serve as a lesson telling the difficulty of Trichet’s job.

Different countries with different demographic realities and the pursuit of a central target inflation rate are not easy to reconcile. Perhaps this relative asymmetry of the Eurozone could even question the future of the ECB?

In the end though, despite my defense of Trichet I do not think it was a smart move, mainly because the situation in the European engine room (France and Germany) does not merit a raise even though that monetary targets have been violated.