Il QE della Banca Centrale Europea fra politica monetaria, politica economica e dinamiche dei mercati finanziari internazionali

The sovereign debt crisis has to be seen, at least to a certain extent, as a consequence of the financial crisis of 2008, and of the subsequent choice of sovereign states to avoid the collapse of the international financial system by refinancing it through their debt. This perspective sheds an interesting light on the ECB’s current course of action in managing the consequences of the euro crisis. Prevented from directly financing Members States’ debt (no-bail out clause), and therefore unable to play the role of lender of last resort for the public sector, as national central banks do, the ECB has conceived a set of non-conventional measures (OMT – Outright Monetary Transactions) that have given rise to a vast debate and some opposition. This choice is currently enacted through the so-called Quantitative Easing (QE), a vast plan for buying public debt securities on secondary markets, thus injecting monetary liquidity through the banking sector. The practical aspects of such an intervention, however, raise doubts both in terms of efficiency and appropriateness, since trusting private markets and favouring speculation does not seem to be the best way to tackle the ongoing crisis, which is, inter alia, the product of the supremacy of the private over the public.