We, the ECB, via monetary policy normalisation, should pay heed to moving our focus from long-term interest rates back to the short end. The more a central bank concentrates on the long term, the closer it gets to redistribution – this is worrying from the perspective of economic governance (“Ordnungspolitik”). Who has the most catching-up to do – banks, business or governments?
Some countries need to do much more to solve the problem of non-performing loans, the NPLs. Other countries are still taking on too much new debt, and others meanwhile have not built up any fiscal buffers at all. It must be clear to everyone that we don’t conduct monetary policy for individual economic actors, but for the whole of the euro area economy.