Between Angela Merkel and Mario Draghi there really are sparks, duels and white-hot clashes or, as Danilo Taino perceptively writes on the front page of the "Corriere della Sera" today, it is only a "comedy of misunderstandings" or, at most, a game of parts in relation to the different roles of the two great protagonists of the European scene?
Der Spiegel refers to an "irritated" phone call from Merkel to Draghi to ask him if he really thinks of abandoning the austerity line and shelving the penalty. Faced with a reconstruction of this kind, the denials, albeit sober, of both the German government and the ECB were obvious. In reality Draghi, who has always had an excellent relationship with Merkel, by virtue of which he was able to neutralize the opposition of the Bundesbank hawks, does not even remotely dream of waging war on Berlin but simply of interpreting with the flexibility envisaged by the Negotiated the line of rigor to combine it with growth and to defeat deflation, which today has become Europe's number one enemy even if not many have noticed it.
Perhaps someone misinterpreted Draghi's Jackson Hole speech but the ECB president was clear: soft austerity but tax cuts offset by cuts in public spending and reforms that cannot be replaced by monetary policy. As always, it is about nuances and Draghi is a master of this but he is also a master of political realism. The crusades do not belong to his vocabulary: those are the exclusive heritage of the standard bearers of defeatism and anti-Europeanism of the left and right, from Montebourg to Grillo and from Salvini to Brunetta.
In essence, the ECB's line will not change, as Draghi will confirm today in his meeting with French President Hollande, but will adapt to the circumstances that require an additional commitment to defeat deflation and restart the recovery. This is why everyone expects that on Thursday the ECB directorate will not back down but will start the planned T-ltro anyway, i.e. the plan of new one-trillion-euro loans to banks on condition that they actually get them to businesses and the real economy.
On the other hand, an anticipation of European-style Quantitative Easing, i.e. the plan to purchase public and private assets by the ECB to inject more liquidity into the system on the model of what the Fed did in America, is completely unrealistic. That project, if it starts, will not be able to start without the blessing or, at least, the non-opposition of Merkel and this takes time to build consensus around the ECB which could however be facilitated both by the diplomatic ability of SuperMario Draghi and by the emerging economic difficulties of Germany also in relation to the repercussions on exports of the anti-Russia sanctions. Long story short, if Qe will be, it won't be until early 2015. The rest is fantasy.
