Mr. Dan O'Brien:

There is a clear difference in views in member states on what central banks should do. Some member states, specifically a large member state in the centre of Europe, take a strong view that central banks should do less rather than more. This particular country was doing relatively well. While it had not had a particularly good seven years, these years were better than in most of the other member states. For that reason, it needed less in terms of a monetary fiscal stimulus. The country in question also had a very large current account surplus, which means that it was selling much more to the rest of the world than it was buying. This is a subject of controversy within the eurozone. If the exchange rate had depreciated, it would have increased this surplus, which would have placed further pressure on the country in question. There are a number of reasons one prominent, powerful country did not want to experiment.