An epidemic has been raging across the continent. The economy is in lockdown, and GDP is in freefall. But, hey, just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse in the eurozone it now has a financial and currency crisis as well, and one that is being made worse by the week with the shambolic management of the European Central Bank by Christine Lagarde.
Today, the German constitutional court has, at least in part, ruled against the ECB’s bond-buying programme, which allows the central bank to print money and effectively bail out Italy, Spain, and probably quite soon France as well. You need to be a German lawyer – not usually among the most interesting people on the planet – to unpick the finer points of the ruling.
It is a mess, and at a moment of maximum danger, no one knows anymore what the central bank can or can’t do anymore
But, stripped of the finer points of the law, it basically boils down to this.
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