“Where did the financial crisis begin? Which central bank conducted monetary policy that was too loose? Which country went down the wrong path of social policy by encouraging low income households to take on mortgage loans that they can never pay back? Who in the year 2000 weakened regulations limiting investment bank leverage ratios, let Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008 and thereby tipped world financial markets into chaos?”
Wolfgang Franz, head of the German government’s economic advisory panel known as the Wise Men, in response to Paul Krugman’s criticisms of Bundesbank President Axel Weber. (See story here.)