ECB is the euro's gravedigger

If the euro collapses it will have been the European Central Bank that dug its grave by twice raising the base interest rate in April and July of this year, writes the liberal weekly The Economist: "Maybe the single currency will survive. It will certainly be disastrous if it doesn't. But if the ECB manages to rescue the euro zone with a life-saving infusion of cash delivered via massive bond purchases, we shouldn't forget that it was the ECB that nearly killed it in the first place. This diagnosis obviously lets individual governments off the hook to some extent. ... The ECB alone regulates Eurozone demand. By engineering a contraction in demand to fight inflation, it likely coordinated a shift in market expectations concerning the solvency of several threshold economies. It's dangerous to walk alone at night in dodgy neighbourhoods, and it's dangerous to carry large debts within a system of fixed exchange rates. But just because a victim lived dangerously doesn't exonerate the fellow, or the central bank, that stuck in the knife."

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