Well, first and foremost, it cannot be ignored that, as a regime change, EMU had a major impact on the formation of expectations, the transmission channels as well as the equilibrium values of key economic variables.
This made it extremely difficult to assess developments in real time, causing very reasonable and competent people to disagree about the best explanation, and therefore to advocate different policy responses. For a number of years, the dominant view in academic and policy circles, as well as in financial markets, was what we might call the “benign view”.