Tag: Mario Draghi

The European Central Bank cut interest rates for the first time in 10 months on Thursday (2 May), driven to act by an economy wallowing in recession and freed to do so by sharply falling inflation.

Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi and Thei Sein head Foreign Policy magazine's list of Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2012. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, at number 12, is the highest-ranking European.

Germany's Constitution Court today (12 September) rejected efforts to block the European Stability Mechanism - the eurozone's €500-billion  bailout fund - paving the way for the country's ratification of the fiscal compact.

In a rare political declaration, Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank (ECB), has rejected "binary choices" for the eurozone's future, dismissing calls for a "United States of Europe" as well as a return to national currencies to stop the sovereign debt crisis.

The European Central Bank is working out plans to launch a new and more transparent scheme for purchasing sovereign debt that will be tied to intervention by the European rescue funds and political action. But Germany's Bundesbank on Monday (20 August) stepped up its resistance to the idea.

The European Stability Mechanism rescue fund will eventually be granted a banking licence, giving it enough fire power to head off the bloc's debt crisis, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti said yesterday (1 August), on the eve of a crunch meeting of the European Central Bank's council today.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble and U.S. counterpart Timothy Geithner said yesterday (30 July) they were confident the countries of the euro zone would implement reforms needed to overcome their sovereign debt crisis. Meanwhile, business confidence in the EU showed a serious decline in July.

In an unusual departure from traditional EU language, European Commission vice-president Olli Rehn and Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Monti have issued dramatic warnings yesterday (31 May) on the euro zone, while European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi openly admitted that the common currency was fighting for its survival. 

Even though Greece’s government missed another deadline to come up with a list of painful reforms, the European Central Bank (ECB) has signalled it will exchange its Greek bond holdings in order to reduce the country’s debt.

The European Central Bank's policy of buying bonds of indebted eurozone countries is in breach of at least three articles in the EU treaties, argues Markus C. Kerber, professor of Public Finance and Political Economy at the Technology University of Berlin. He led a legal challenge against eurozone bailouts before the German constitutional court.

European stock markets and the euro fluctuated as investors tried to make sense of the deal struck by EU leaders earlier today (9 December), in the attempt to forge measures that would halt the slide of eurozone government bond markets after two years of deepening crisis.

The European Central Bank cut interest rates by a quarter point to 1.25% in a surprise move on Thursday (3 November), acting boldly to support the ailing eurozone economy at the first policy meeting where President Mario Draghi's was in charge.

According to insiders, Italian Mario Draghi, on track to become the new European Central Bank chief having received the backing of eurozone finance ministers, will need to dispel mutterings about lax southern Europeans and win over a more hawkish Bundesbank chief.