Le Monde | | Interview by
Jean Michel Six, chief economist at Standard & amp agency; Poor’s for the Europe, Middle East and Africa, believes that the ECB is committed to “a very aggressive program.”
What impact will the measures announced by the ECB on the countries of southern Europe?
This is a very aggressive program of its size. As such, it will allow to compress a little more the yield spread on government bonds – the famous “spread” – between the most virtuous countries, such as Germany and the Nordic countries and the rest of Europe. Investors will have the assurance that the ECB will buy in the secondary market a portion of their debts. They should therefore be more verbose and take more risks. It is difficult to predict the extent of this movement but it can give an extra boost to full reversal countries like Spain.
The population of these countries will t- it change things?
With the acquisition of state debt, including banks who hold the ECB will allow them to clean up their balance sheets a little more. Here too it is difficult to quantify but it should allow financial institutions to inject more cash into the economy and therefore benefit the population. People will have another opportunity to get credit to buy a house or a car. It’s good for the real economy.
Germany fears that such measures benefit mainly to Greece and do away reforms. Do you find this justified?
No, because 80% of Greek debt is already in the hands of the ECB or the European states. The country will not benefit directly from the redemption policy decided by Mario Draghi [President of the ECB] . I do not think it will bring back investors, at least not right away: they are too shriveled. However, if Greece and other European countries believe that the ECB will fix everything and they do not have to do anything, we’re going to the disaster. The ECB can not succeed alone to boost growth.
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