Prof. Sheri Berman writes about democracy, banks and the Euro crisis

For Global Policy Forum, economics professor Sheri Berman writes about the current Euro crisis, debunking the standard neoliberal arguments in favor of central bank independence and pointing to its illegitimacy. An excerpt from her piece:

"The recent summit of European leaders in Brussels seems to have produced some agreement among the seventeen members of the Eurozone on a new plan to deal with the EU’s current crisis. This plan, in turn, seems to have been at least partially spurred by Mario Draghi, the head of the European Central Bank (ECB), who has indicated that if the union could enforce more fiscal discipline on its members, the ECB might be willing to do more to help the EU’s beleaguered members. Despite the widely held view that some sort of implicit (or explicit) grand bargain was in the works, Draghi began to back away from his earlier statements almost as soon as the Brussels summit concluded. This episode was, or should be, disturbing. Why, in a time of crisis, should democratic leaders have to make deals with (or even beg) unelected technocrats to come to their aid? Why have central bankers been given such power over the fates of democratic governments and their citizens? Indeed, why are such questions only rarely asked?"

Read the full article here.

Prof. Berman is a professor of political science and her main interests are European politics and political history, democracy and democratization, globalization, and the history of the left.