“The ECB will keep rates high to correct a mistake”. Bruni speaks

Today's aggressive maneuvers are the result of an underestimation, the economist of Bocconi University and vice president of ISPI tells us: "Central banks must go back to their job, which is not to stimulate the economy by keeping interest rates at zero forever"

Faced with worsening economic data from the Eurozone, some are starting to speculate that the monetary tightening will end in September. "But it probably won't be like this," Franco Bruni, an economist at Bocconi University and vice president of ISPI, told Il Foglio. For Bruni, the ECB, which is meeting on Thursday, will do what is necessary to bring inflation back to 2 percent because it has realized the "enormous delay" with which it started the rate hike a year ago. “There was a serious and guilty error of undervaluation by central banks on both sides of the Atlantic which then forced them into particularly aggressive maneuvers”. Bruni is among the harshest critics of the recent policies of the ECB and the Fed and has put everything into his latest book "Beyond the Pillars of Hercules", which he will present in Milan with the governor of the Bank of Italy, Ignatius Visco. “It's not said that we think the same way – he points out – but we agree that it's a point worth reflecting on to avoid falling back into it in the future. Central banks must go back to doing their job, i.e. guaranteeing financial and price stability, while for a while it seemed that monetary policy had to carry out a task that was against its nature: to stimulate the economy by keeping rates at zero forever or by becoming the main buyer of the member countries' debt for too long periods. Well, I think it's the wrong way. On the other hand, it is essential that the ECB regain possession of its original mission while European politics should make progress by seeking the cohesion necessary to increase common spending in fields such as infrastructure, health and the climate emergency".