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    Accountability and the ECB

    Sibert, Anne (2010) Accountability and the ECB. In: Central Bank of Austria's 38th Economics Conference: Central Banking after the Crisis: Responsibilities, Strategies, Instruments, May 2010, Vienna.

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    Abstract

    Since the financial crisis the Eurosystem (the ECB and the National Central Banks (NCBs) of the 16 Euro Area member states) have greatly expanded both the scope of their actions and the size of their balance sheets. NCBs have conducted lender-of-last resort actions for their governments’ accounts. The ECB has massively expanded the range of securities that are acceptable as collateral in the repos and other collateralised loan transactions done by the NCBs. It has participated in currency swaps with other governments and provided repo facilities to non-Euro Area countries such as Hungary. On 9 May 2010, it announced that it would purchase Euro Area government bonds outright in secondary markets as part of the financial support scheme for heavily indebted Euro Area countries. In acting as a lender of last resort, or otherwise intervening in financial markets, the Eurosystem is taking on risk and redistributing income. Allowing an independent and unelected body to have such a political role is only palatable in a democracy if the institution is viewed as legitimate.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Business and Law > Birkbeck Business School
    Depositing User: Sarah Hall
    Date Deposited: 29 Apr 2014 14:37
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 17:10
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/9650

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