Published: 2022.09.23. Gold as protection during the Euro-crisis
Whether it was former ECB President Mario Draghi's "Whatever it takes" speech in 2012, preventing near-bankruptcy of Greece with ECB loans in 2015, surviving the Eurozone during the pandemic with the trillion euro "PEPP" program, or the current "TPI to prevent a second Italian national bankruptcy: without the ECB, the single currency would have collapsed countless times over at least a decade.
The reason for this is as simple as it is frightening: no other central bank in the Eurozone has the privilege of creating money independently of the ECB. As you know, many problems can be solved with the help of money. But with too much money, you achieve the exact opposite, namely rising prices and losing confidence in the issuer of the currency. Especially when, in addition to the flood of money and the absence of a real interest rate, supply chains are broken and the supply of goods and services is reduced.
It is also true that the ECB was not only bailing out governments, but also supporting a monetary system that would have collapsed in a short time. As early as 2000, the euro fell below parity with the US dollar as Anglo-Saxon economists in particular did not believe that the Eurozone structure would last too long.
The ECB pursues a single monetary policy for 27 states with completely different economic and social characteristics. This can be seen, in particular, in the widely divergent inflation figures at the same key interest rates.