Jens Weidmann, head of Germany’s Bundesbank, has been a lonely voice among Europe’s central bankers for a decade.
In 2012, just after then European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi committed at the height of the sovereign debt crisis to do “whatever it takes to preserve the euro” — including printing vast sums of money to buy government bonds — Weidmann had warned “we shouldn’t underestimate the danger that central bank financing can become addictive like a drug.”
Since that point, the ECB has been locked in a bitter stand-off with the Bundesbank, which has repeatedly spoken out against the increasingly unconventional policies that have flooded Europe’s financial markets with cheap money.