Introduction

Abstract

In Europe, the collapse of financial stability in 2007–8 was a crucial factor that triggered market turbulence and uncertainty. The most intense period of the Eurozone crisis occurred in between the years 2010 and 2013. The European Commission became the broker of compromise among three key players: the German Federal Government in Berlin, the ECB in Frankfurt and the IMF in Washington, DC, which the author started to call the Eurozone’s “Impossible Triangle”. The silent transformation of the ECB “from a Bundesbank to a Federal Reserve” over the years 2010–15 was critical for saving the euro. It was a pragmatic change but turned into a silent philosophical transformation in monetary economics and European central banking—though it is still contested.