Super Mario Draghi’s Day of Reckoning Has Arrived
“Within our mandate, the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. And believe me, it will be enough.” — MARIO DRAGHI JULY 26TH 2012
No quote better defines Mario Draghi’s seven-plus years as the President of the European Central Bank than that quote. Draghi has thrown literally everything at the deflationary spiral the Euro-zone is in to no avail.
What has been enough has been nothing more than a holding pattern.
And after more than six years of the market believing Draghi’s words, after all of the alphabet soup programs — ESM, LTRO, TLTRO, OMB, ZOMG, BBQSAUCE — Draghi finally made chumps out of traders yesterday.
Draghi reversed himself after December’s overly hawkish statement in grand fashion but none dare call it capitulation. For years he has patched together a flawed euro papering over cracks with enough liquidity spackle to hide the deepest cracks.
The Ponzi scheme needs to be maintained just a little while longer.
He’s not alone. In fact, all the major central banks have been working in concert since the day they broke the gold bull market back in September 2011, when the Swiss National Bank pegged the Franc to the euro which began the era of coordinated central bank policy.
And since 2013’s Taper Tantrum when then FOMC-Chair Ben Bernanke
timidly announced a future without QE the markets have consistently tore at their resolve to normalize monetary policy.
Because when you paper over reality you don’t fix the underlying problems. The losses are still there, hidden in plain sight, held at mark-to-model prices, on central bank balance sheets.
Ben retired and Janet took over. She held the fort for nearly her entire term, refusing to raise rates while Draghi sent rates negative alongside Japan’s Kuroda.
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