Ecb

David Cameron and Angela Merkel were clearly keen to show that, whatever the tensions over the role of the European Central Bank, they still get on. I lost count of the number of times in their press conference that they used the word ‘good’ to characterise their relationship and their discussions. But there did not appear to have been any actual progress on how to deal with the current crisis. Certainly, there was no softening of Germany’s opposition to using the ECB as the backstop for the Eurozone. Merkel conceded that she had raised a European-only financial transactions tax with the Prime Minister but that, unsurprisingly, no progress had been

For all the debate about Theresa May and border security, the big news has not been at Westminster today. Instead, people have been watching what is happening in Italy. For it is far from certain that Europe, or the Western world for that matter, has a bucket bigger enough to bail out a country that owes more than Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain do combined. As the New York Times reports, the European Central Bank is reluctant to step in and start buying Italian bonds because it fears that its previous bond buying efforts have simply enabled the Italians to avoid necessary reforms. It feels that only market pressure will