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On November 8, 2013, several members of the British House of Lords’ Subcommittee A conducted a hearing at the ECB in Frankfurt, Germany, on “Genuine Economic and Monetary Union and its Implications for the UK”. Professors Otmar Issing and Jan Pieter Krahnen were called as expert witnesses.
The testimony began with a general discussion on the elements considered necessary for a functioning internal market. Do economic union and monetary union require a fiscal union or even a political union, beyond the elements of the banking union currently being prepared? In this context, also the critique of the German current account surplus and the international expectations that Germany stimulate internal demand to support growth in crisis countries, were discussed.
With regard to the monetary union, the members of the subcommittee asked for an assessment of how European nations and the banking industry would have fared in the banking crisis that followed the Lehman collapse, had there not been a common currency. Given the important role that the ECB has played in the course of the crisis management, the members further asked for an evaluation of the OMT-program of the ECB and also if the monetary union is in need of common debt instruments, in order to provide the ECB with the possibility of buying EU liabilities, comparable to the Fed buying US Treasury bonds. Finally, the dual role of the ECB for monetary policy and banking supervision was an issue touched on by several questions.
Der Beitrag analysiert die Voraussetzungen für stabiles Geld und setzt sich dabei grundlegend mit Hayeks Thesen zu alternativen Währungssystemen sowie dessen fundamentaler Kritik an der Möglichkeit zur Gestaltung der Geldpolitik auf wissenschaftlicher Basis auseinander. Er prüft Hayeks Vorschlag zur Entnationalisierung des Geldes und seine Thesen zur Überlegenheit des im privaten Wettbewerb geschaffenen Geldes. In diesem Zusammenhang schlägt der Beitrag einen Bogen zur aktuellen Diskussion über Kryptowährungen und wirft die Frage auf, ob virtuelle Währungen wie etwa Bitcoin geeignet sind, den Hayekschen Währungswettbewerb zu entfalten. Sodann wird im Gegensatz zu Hayeks Forderung nach einer Abschaffung der Zentralbanken deren entscheidende Rolle für anhaltendes Wachstum bei stabilen Preisen skizziert und die Wichtigkeit der Unabhängigkeit von Notenbanken für die dauerhafte Durchführung einer stabilitätsorientierten Geldpolitik hervorgehoben. Gleichwohl ergeht der Hinweis, dass Notenbanken mit der Überschreitung ihres Mandats auf lange Sicht gesehen selbst den Status ihrer Unabhängigkeit unterminieren können und damit die Rückübertragung der Kompetenz für zentrale geldpolitische Entscheidungen auf Regierung und Parlament provozieren. Die Gefahren der weitgehenden Unabhängigkeit einiger weniger an der Spitze der Notenbanken anerkennend wird anschließend die Bedeutung ihrer Rechenschaftspflicht und Transparenz ihrer Entscheidungen unterstrichen.
In his speech at the conference „The SNB and its Watchers“, Otmar Issing, member of the ECB Governing Council from its start in 1998 until 2006, takes a look back at more than twenty years of the conference series „The ECB and Its Watchers“. In June 1999, Issing established this format together with Axel Weber, then Director of the Center for Financial Studies, to discuss the monetary policy strategy of the newly founded central bank with a broad circle of participants, that is academics, bank economists and members of the media on a „neutral ground“. At the annual conference, the ECB and its representatives would play an active role and engage in a lively exchange of view with the other participants. Over the years, Volker Wieland took over as organizer of the conference series, which also was adopted by other central banks. In his contribution at the second conference „The SNB and its Watchers“, Issing summarizes the experience gained from over twenty years of the ECB Watchers Conference.
In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis that started in 2007, policymakers were forced to respond quickly and forcefully to a recession caused not by short-term factors, but rather by an over-accumulation of debt by sovereigns, banks, and households: a so-called “balance sheet recession.” Though the nature of the crisis was understood relatively early on, policy prescriptions for how to deal with its consequences have continued to diverge. This paper gives a short overview of the prescriptions, the remaining challenges and key lessons for monetary policy.
Wie kann das Projekt gemeinsame Währung seine Glaubwürdigkeit wiederherstellen? Otmar Issing argumentiert, dass eine gemeinsame Währung ohne politische Union nur mit dem No-bail-out Prinzip funktionieren kann. Er warnt gleichzeitig davor, die politische Union nur als Mittel zur Krisenbewältigung voranzutreiben.
Großer Beifall
(2012)
n a contribution prepared for the Athens Symposium on “Banking Union, Monetary Policy and Economic Growth”, Otmar Issing describes forward guidance by central banks as the culmination of the idea of guiding expectations by pure communication. In practice, he argues, forward guidance has proved a misguided idea. What is presented as state of the art monetary policy is an example of pretence of knowledge. Forward guidance tries to give the impression of a kind of rule-based monetary policy. De facto, however, it is an overambitious discretionary approach which, to be successful, would need much more (or rather better) information than is currently available. In Issing's view, communication must be clear and honest about the limits of monetary policy in a world of uncertainty.