From the point of view of Finance Minister Christian Lindner's (FDP) economic adviser, the European Central Bank (ECB) should tighten its monetary policy course quickly.
"First of all, the ECB must ensure that the exit from the bond purchases is faster," said Freiburg economics professor Lars Feld of the Viennese newspaper "Die Presse".
He interprets her statements in such a way that she could buy fewer government bonds as early as March.
“We also have a negative deposit rate for banks.
Changing this from minus 0.5 to zero would be an important signal to the banks,” he added.
As far as the degree of restriction of European monetary policy is concerned, however, this would change little.
After the most recent interest rate meeting, ECB boss Christine Lagarde did not repeat her earlier assessment that a turnaround in interest rates in 2022 was very unlikely.
The European Central Bank (ECB) is keeping the key monetary policy rate at a record low of 0.0 percent.
At the same time, banks must continue to pay penalty interest if they park excess funds at the ECB: the so-called deposit rate remained at minus 0.5 percent.
The 55-year-old Feld has held the Chair of Economic Policy and Regulatory Economics at the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg since 2010.
From 2011 to 2021 he was a member of the German Council of Economic Experts, i.e. an economist.
From March 2020 to February 2021 he was the chair of the panel.
Federal Minister of Finance Lindner has now appointed Feld as "Personal Representative".
In this role, Feld will support the minister in assessing macroeconomic issues.