Quantitative easing kicks the Eurozone further down the long road

Een stukje in het Engels dat werd gepubliceerd op de webstek van de ECR-groep, de politieke fractie in het Europees parlement waar N-VA deel van uitmaakt. Onderwerp: de beslissing van de Europese centrale bank (ECB) om 1,1 biljoen (!) euro ('kwantitatieve verruiming') in de Europese economie te injecteren en waarom dit volgens Sander meer risico's dan voordelen biedt:

European Central Bank quantitative easing is an experiment with more risks than benefits. The major risk exists in Member states putting off the critical reforms needed to make European economies more competitive, ECR MEP from Belgium Sander Loones, has warned.

Mr Loones, the Vice-President of the European Parliament’s economics committee, says the problem is not a lack of supply of credit, but a lack of trust to invest in a non competitive economy.

He said:

“We are not going to solve the Eurozone crisis by printing money. At best this buys time but it stores up many problems that will come back to bite us. Cheap credit is not a problem in Europe, partly because of previous actions of the ECB to inject liquidity into the market. It only risks putting off the tough decisions that governments and people across Europe have to make in order to regain competitiveness and promote investment. “QE has been deployed in other countries, but that does not make it the right answer for the euro. Even more surprising is the fact that the ECB is calling the shots, and not democratically accountable politicians. In this way technocrats are effectively introducing transfers from one part of the Eurozone to another. 

“This is not an abstract debate, it touches real people’s lives”, Loones continues, “People’s savings will be hit at the expense of the wrong kind of risk-taking in the financial sector. We have to ask where this money will go and I fear it might not trickle down to the real economy. It might inflate a big bubble that we could live to regret.

“The Eurozone cannot duck the tough decisions, and this is just another exercise in kicking the can down an already long and troubled road.”