Merkel Adviser Franz Says He Rejects Intervention by ECB

German government adviser Wolfgang Franz said that he opposed European Central Bank purchases of euro-area sovereign bonds, citing Germany’s historical aversion to debt.

“I reject intervention by the ECB, I reject euro bonds,” Franz, the chairman of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s council of economic advisers, said in an interview today with Bloomberg Television’s Maryam Nemazee. He cited German experience of the 1920s, when its central bank financed public debt and then lost its independence, stoking hyperinflation.