Surveys have shown that about a third of country authorities and half of the mission chiefs did not believe that the IMF has become more even handed since the onset of the global crisis. Lack of even handedness can undermine the IMF’s ability to perform both its global watchdog and trusted advisor roles.
The negative consequences considered included, as mentioned in the account of the discussion of the Governing Council in January 2015, “moral hazard implications for euro area governments [which] could weaken their incentives for structural reforms and fiscal consolidation”, as well as 2/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  possible “financial stability ramifications” and “spillovers from sovereign bond purchases, not only to corporate bond prices, but also into equity prices [which] could trigger the mispricing of risks…”2 Furthermore, throughout the life of the PSPP, there has been an extensive discussion on every aspect of the programme, in the central bank, in the academia and in the public arena.