The ECB’s Former Vice-President Explains The Historic Step That Europe Just Took
Odd Lots
Bloomberg
4.5 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 10 August 2020
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For years, people have identified the lack of fiscal transfers and fiscal burden sharing as one of the glaring architectural flaws of the European economy (particularly within the eurozone). One positive that may result from this crisis is the potential for that to change. Last month, EU governments made an agreement to establish a recovery fund that would see wealthy, thriving countries (like Germany) directly aid in the economic recovery of countries that are struggling (such as Italy). It’s something people hoped to see during the eurozone crisis of nearly a decade ago, but which never quite panned out. On this episode, we speak with former ECB Vice-President Vítor Constâncio about the historic step, and the future for central banking at a time when fiscal firepower is becoming even more important.
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Crash Course, a podcast about business, political, and social disruption and what we can learn from it. |
| 0:07.0 | I'm Tim O'Brien. Every week on Crash Course, I'm going to bring listeners directly into the arenas where epic upheavals occur and |
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| 0:28.0 | or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to Tracy Allaway. |
| 0:45.0 | I was thinking we don't really talk that much about Europe these days. |
| 0:48.0 | Tracy I was thinking we don't really talk that much about Europe these days. |
| 0:52.0 | I mean I guess not in relation to the the heady days of the |
| 0:58.6 | Eurozone debt crisis no we don't. But also I feel like in this particular crisis at least from some of our |
| 1:05.6 | episodes you know obviously we talk a lot in the Fed context the US context and of |
| 1:10.3 | course you know I've talked plenty about Hong Kong and Asia and |
| 1:15.1 | Asian supply chains and China and so forth. |
| 1:18.2 | It feels like we focus a little bit less on how this current crisis is playing out in the European context. |
| 1:25.0 | Yeah, I think that's right. |
| 1:27.0 | I guess the implication is that maybe this has been unfair in some respects |
| 1:31.0 | because there has actually been something very very interesting going on in Europe at the moment. |
| 1:36.5 | Yeah, I mean for one thing you know there's a good argument to be made that Europe at least relative to the US |
| 1:42.4 | if not necessarily Asian countries has done a pretty |
| 1:45.6 | decent job overall of suppressing the virus itself and you know for years during the euro area crisis there are always people like |
| 1:55.1 | fiscal policy fiscal policy that's what's missing you got to spend more |
| 1:58.8 | got to get the Germans to spend more and you know maybe this time it looks like they're actually doing |
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