Pubblicato su BRAVE NEW EUROPE
The endless TARGET2 saga
Sergio Cesaratto, Eladio Febrero, George Pantelopoulos*
TARGET2 imbalances seem to be an endless source of controversy. At the beginning of the last decade, Hans Werner Sinn claimed that T2 imbalances served to fund current account deficits forgetting the responsibility of German mercantilism. Last week Eurointelligence raised the question of presumed onerous interest payments burdening the southern countries with TARGET2 liabilities to the advantage of northern countries. This post shows that this is false, as TARGET2 imbalances do not entail, de facto, intra-Eurosystem payments.
