Please Europe, either put up or break up – Telegraph Blogs

So we wait to see whether the ECB is really willing to sit back and let the whole edifice collapse.

Are the Bundesbankers really so stubborn that they would rather bring down the European financial system, tank the world economy, and cause a deep global depression, rather than enter the bond market on a sufficient scale to back-stop Italy and Spain?

Tough call. 50:50, I’d say.

The hardliners are seriously ideological people, and there seem to be some in the upper echelons of German policy-making (though obviously not the floundering bean-counter Schauble, or the battered Chancellor), who suspect that it might be better to lance the boil by forcing an immediate break-up of EMU.

I note that Belgium’s central bank governor Coene hinted that the ECB is withholding bond purchases to force Italy and Spain to push through – you guessed it – yet more growth-destroying austerity. Dangerous game. These 1930s deflationists really are a menace to society.

Please Europe, either put up or break up – Telegraph Blogs