FRANKFURT (MNI) – The European Central Bank can only fulfill its
mandate to ensure price stability if it does not also try to serve
fiscal policy, Governing Council member Jens Weidmann said in an
interview with the German monthly Manager Magazin released on Wednesday.
Weidmann, who heads the German Bundesbank, said that central banks
neither can nor want to take on responsibility for problems whose
solution should come from elsewhere.
“Our task is ensuring monetary stability,” he said. “And we can
only fulfill it if we do not let ourselves be claimed for fiscal policy
aims. That is precisely the problem at the moment. Many people want to
use monetary policy to distribute existing risk right past parliamentary
control and in this way temporarily conceal the tensions in the currency
union. But this cannot be the mandate of an independent monetary
policy.”
– Frankfurt bureau: +49 69 720 142; email: frankfurt@marketnews.com
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