Germany's Bundesbank puts theory before reality

The president of the Bundesbank, Jens Weidmann, was the only member of the ECB Governing Council to vote against the Central Bank purchasing more government bonds. The left-liberal daily El País condemns this as stubbornly clinging to theories that ignore reality: "No one doubts that the economic state of affairs is desolate, not even Weidmann and the Bundesbank. However Weidmann and the Bundesbank are almost the only ones who continue to claim that the desolation of the present economic situation doesn't call for a change of direction. ... To accept this change would be to admit that an empirical observation as glaring as the ruin of Greece, Ireland and Portugal, which may soon be followed by that of Spain and Italy and perhaps even all Europe, should weigh more heavily than the theoretical speculation about allowing the European Central Bank to play too great a role in solving the crisis. For all economists who think like Weidmann and the Bundesbank, a world in which economic decisions were a response to the coarse stimulus of facts rather than the sterile demands of theory would be an upside-down world."

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