A good dose of Anglo-Saxon culture is what the European Central Bank needs on its executive board, and the quickest way to achieve that is for the UK to join the euro. This isn't UK prime minister Tony Blair speaking, it's Francesco Giavazzi, economics professor at Bocconi University in Milan.
Peter Garber, global risk strategist at Deutsche Bank had asked: could the ECB ever be like the US Federal Reserve - readily supporting and intervening in financial markets and allowing all sorts of exotic intermediaries to flourish? "It depends when the UK joins Emu," Giavazzi said. The later it did, "the less you'll get a liquid market".
Giavazzi is co-author of a report entitled "The future of European banking", launched on February 25 by the London-based Centre for Economic Policy Research. At the launch, panellists insisted that the ECB is not a true central bank, since it isn't a lender of last resort, and regulatory oversight of the banks is decentralized. "There are some good arguments that a central bank should distance itself from, especially, non-bank financial institutions," Giavazzi said. But he also cited the view of ECB executive board member Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, who favours keeping the structure but enhancing coordination between national supervisors, until they become "a single virtual supervisor".