• AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    The problem for the EU is they don’t exactly have a sovereign currency, at least not the way The US, UK, AU, CA, and China have. We can always pay more, because the government can just “print more money.” I don’t know if the EU can really do that with the Euro. They should be able to, but they don’t seem to function the way our Federal Government does.

    • jarfil@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      The ECB is more independent, but that doesn’t really matter. The EU can borrow from it just like the US government does from the Federal Reserve, and the ECB’s mandate is to stabilize inflation, no matter what the EU does.

      If the EU decided to borrow massive amounts of Euros to spend on weapon manufacturing and creating its own military, that would have massive ripples on the whole economy and impact inflation, but the ECB would just have to follow.

      The only real difference is in foreign monetary policy: the ECB doesn’t have to listen to EU Parliament’s wishes to change monetary policy in order to weaponize it, while central banks in the US, UK, AU, China, etc. do have to listen to their respective government’s wishes to mess up the internal economy for whatever reason they see convenient.

      • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Thanks for the explanation. I’m an American, so trying to keep our politics straight is a full time job. I haven’t had much opportunity to really look at the alternatives.