Europe's answer to
Jackson Hole, Wyoming is, this year, in Sintra, Portugal. According to the AP's David McHugh,
Mario Draghi came out with guns blazing;
European Central Bank head Mario Draghi started things off with a sharp call for pro-business reforms by governments.
Such
reforms "are about unleashing an untapped potential for substantially
higher output, employment and welfare," Draghi said in his opening
remarks.
Draghi wasn't the only one worried about Europe's sclerosis;
"There is no way the central bank all on its own can solve all of
Europe's problems, and there has been a tendency for policy makers to
sit back and let the ECB do it all, and that is both unreasonable and
unconscionable" said Dennis J. Snower, president of the Kiel Institute
of the World Economy in Germany.
Snower advocates active measures
to help people get back into work, such as retraining workers whose
skills don't fit employer needs, or subsidies to companies that take on
the long-term unemployed. "Find the disadvantaged people and give them
maximal incentives to get into the labor force, and give employers
maximal incentives to hire them," he told The Associated Press on the
conference sidelines.
Naturally that didn't sit well with
the Euroway or the highway types;
Paul De Grauwe from the London School of Economics — a former member
of the Belgian parliament — said the central bank put its legitimacy at
risk.
He said restrictions on layoffs existed "because people want
them. ... And in democracies, people will obtain protection from their
governments."
"And when a central bank then comes out and says we
should do structural reforms, it really says we should break down this
system of protections. And in doing so the central bank sets itself
outside the democratic process.
"The danger is that people will reject such a central bank."
Or the central bank will reject them. As
may be dawning on Greece.
Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2015/05/23/3805553/what-will-get-europes-economy.html#storylink=cpy
Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2015/05/23/3805553/what-will-get-europes-economy.html#storylink=cpy
Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2015/05/23/3805553/what-will-get-europes-economy.html#storylink=cpy
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