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Questo articolo è stato pubblicato il 28 marzo 2013 alle ore 07:16.

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Political uncertainty surely also plays a role. We are going to be for a while in an economic environment of tough adjustments and high unemployment rates. We cannot be sure that governments will be able to deliver, or, in some cases, will still be there to deliver. In the Eurozone there is the additional problem, that of 17 countries with different views and different economic situations. And, while there has been much institutional progress in the last year, this makes for difficult negotiations, steps forward followed by partial steps back, and adds to uncertainty.

S. You mentioned the ECB and the Fed. In Europe, a lot of people would like to see a much more Fed-like ECB.
B. There are differences between the FED and the ECB. The FED has an explicit dual mandate, namely to care about both inflation and activity. The ECB, partly because it is a new institution which needed to establish credibility, partly because of different traditions, focuses on inflation. But I don't think the ECB, Fed have acted very differently in the crisis. They both tackled the issues aggressively, with different tools, corresponding to different situations. QE and OMT are both very aggressive responses. One problem likely to face the ECB soon is likely to be how to deal with and react to inflation below target.
On inflation, let me make an obvious remark. If Germany wants the South to improve competitiveness, by definition, this implies them having lower inflation than in Germany. But if the ECB is to keep average inflation in the Euro zone around 2%, this implies, as a matter of arithmetic that Germany must have more than 2% inflation. This is not always well understood.

S. Another risk for the Eurozone is to find itself in a currency war in which everybody seeks to devalue their currency and the ECB does not want to take part. The Eurozone will then suffer from the appreciation of the euro.
B. There are no currency wars. But it is important for countries to have clear rules of the road, as to what they can do or not do. At the last G20, countries agreed to such general rules. Namely, each country should concentrate on achieving both internal balance, that is keeping output close to potential, and external balance, namely achieving a reasonable current account position. Exchange rates should then be determined by markets. And if capital flows prove too volatile, countries can use various means to reduce that volatility. These strike me as reasonable rules, for a very complex world.

S. Even though Mr Draghi maintains that the ECB monetary policy is accomodative, it does not seem to reach the whole of the Eurozone and credit flows to the real economy are insufficient in many countries.

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