Mario #Draghi: We have to comply with our mandate. We're not politicians here http://t.co/EfO3W9BlcQ

— euinside (@euinside) diciembre 4, 2014

Negative : While comprehensively betraying their mandate on inflation, the ECB hectors nations to "reform" - NOT their mandate.

Obama actually seems the best of them (the only structural change that I can see is Obamacare and that one seems a good one, for a change). Though his administration is trying to force a complete TTIP, so let me shut up.

On the other hand this diary undermines the standing of ECB through pointing out their failure to reach their target, and undermines inflation fears.

My main problem with ECB is not its interest rates politics (even though the whole NAIRU thing is one big problem), but how it through blackmail has seized power in the Troika countries and is running them into the ground.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

The ECB's balance sheet, if needed

A central bank can undertake two principal actions: actively stimulate the economy and passively promote lending (see Hetzel, 2012, especially chapters 14 and 16 for the theory and application to the Great Recession in the United States). Active monetary stimulus of the economy is normally achieved by reducing its policy interest rate. The market's expectation of how long the policy rate will remain low determines the extent of the decline in long-term interest rates and the consequent increase in investment. When the policy rate falls to zero, the central bank can buy financial assets to directly lower the long-term interest rate, an action often described as "quantitative easing."

In contrast to active monetary stimulus, the central bank can passively provide funds to banks in the hope they will lend more to release credit constraints on economic growth. However, there is no guarantee that the banks will use their easier access to funds for new lending.  

By these conventional categories, the ECB provided no active stimulus. Policy interest rate reductions always lagged behind the fall in activity; indeed, interest rates were raised in 2008 and, more disastrously, in 2011 (Hetzel, 2014). And, the ECB has been virtually absent in the purchase of assets to directly influence long-term rates.  

The ECB did provide banks with additional "liquidity." But, in doing so, it acted in a manner highly unusual for central banks. For an extended period, the ECB's so-called liquidity operations have, in effect, propped up insolvent banks and have thus been a giant exercise in forbearance.

Consider the evidence.