Dr. Dirk Ehnts:

Yes. We normally have a central bank that has an inflation target but also an employment or growth target, like the Federal Reserve. All the other countries have central banks which support the national government. They make sure the national government never runs out of money, even if tax revenues plummet because of a pandemic, for example. No country with its own currency went bankrupt or ran out of money in the current crisis. Even as the eurozone, we understood this and I think the ECB has done a great job with the PEPP programme. It is up to us now to say we can make the money available, so let us target the missions. Let us have the governments pick some missions they want to fulfil. Employment targets, for example, would be a great idea. After years of austerity, policymakers still have the idea that budgets should be drafted with a certain deficit target that must be hit. They think about public purpose and things to do for the people but it would be better to switch focus and directly address the problems we have today, such as the climate crisis and unemployment. That would be much better than trying to hit those deficit targets.