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The ECB’s three mistakes in the Greek crisis and how to get sovereign

Frankel, Jeffrey, (2011), ‘The ECB’s three mistakes in the Greek crisis and how to get sovereign debt right in the fut’, www.voxeu.org, 16 Μαίου.

It is a year since Greece was bailed out by EU and IMF and there are many who label it a failure. This column says that while there is plenty of blame to go around, there were three big mistakes made by the European Central Bank. Number one: Letting Greece join the euro in the first place. By now just about everybody agrees that the European bailout of Greece has failed (see for example Darvas et al. 2011). The debt will have to be restructured. As has been evident for well over a year, it is not possible to think of a plausible combination of Greek budget balance, sovereign risk premium, and economic growth rates that imply anything other than an explosive path for the future ratio of debt to GDP.