Central Banks

What Milton Friedman Wrote to Otmar Issing at Creation of ECB

  • ‘Congratulations on an impossible job’ was his message
  • Issing spoke to Bloomberg Television just as ECB turns 25
WATCH: When Otmar Issing became chief economist of the fledgling European Central Bank, he was greeted with a letter from one of the project’s leading skeptics. Milton Friedman said he was convinced the euro would fail. He was wrong. Bloomberg’s Oliver Crook reports.Source: Bloomberg
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When Otmar Issing became chief economist of the fledgling European Central Bank a quarter of a century ago, he was greeted with a letter from one of the project’s leading skeptics.

Milton Friedman, the Nobel-Prize winning monetarist, had publicly warned of the dangers of trying to fuse the currencies of 11 sovereign nations into one.