ASI comments on Greece's debt restructuring plan feature in CityAM
ASI Fellow Lars Christensen was quoted in CityAM supporting the new Greek finance minister's debt restructuring plan:
Greece's finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has found an enthusiastic backer for his debt restructuring plans in one of Britain's premier free-market think-tanks.
Greece has abandoned demands for a write-off of foreign debt and has instead proposed swapping the outstanding debt for growth-linked bonds accompanied by a crackdown on tax evasion and budget surpluses.
Varoufakis described the new options as a "menu of debt swaps", according to the Financial Times. The first of these options would be new bonds indexed to nominal economic growth, which would replace European rescue bonds.
Lars Christensen, a fellow at the Adam Smith Institute (ASI), said today:
The European Central Bank's job is to ensure nominal stability in the Eurozone economy. The ECB should not bail out governments and banks.
Unfortunately again and again over the past six years the ECB has been forced to bailout Eurozone states. Hence, the ECB has repeatedly conducted credit policy (rather than monetary policy) to avoid Eurozone countries defaulting.