(ANSA)- Rome, August 19 -The European Central Bank cannot
re-launch growth in Europe through so-called quantitative easing
since the continent's economic problems are rooted in "the
chronic sickness of Italy and France and the European banking
system," former Swiss central bank governor Philipp Hildebrand
said Tuesday.
While the economies of countries such as Spain and Portugal
have started growing again and even Greece shows signs of
recovery "Italy and France are in such a bad state that no
quantitative easing (government bond purchasing) would succeed
in making them grow," Hildebrand, a Vice-President of BlackRock,
wrote in an editorial comment for the Financial Times newspaper.
Rome and Paris "must reform the labour market, reduce taxes
that weigh on firms, thin down the bureaucracy and continue to
sanitize public accounts" and "not just talk about doing it," he
added.
Purchasing state bonds by the ECB is counter-productive in
that it "would allow those countries to finance still lower
interest rates and therefore to give those governments reluctant
to carry out reforms an easy way out," Hildebrand said.
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