European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi apparently lied during a live press conference when he was asked whether there was a Plan B on Greece. It was back in April 2013, when Mario Draghi dismissed the option “there was a plan for the euro zone exit of the debt-ridden country.”
However as the Financial Times reveals, there was indeed a Plan for Greece’s exit form the euro zone and thus worked out by a team consisting of EU Commission, IMF and ECB officials!
Below the lie revelation by the respected economy news blog Zero Hedge
“When The Head Of The European Central Bank Lies To Zero Hedge On The Record: Presenting Europe’s “Plan Z”
Who can possibly forget the following exchange from April 2013 in which a very simple question was asked: so simple that apparently nobody else in the very serious media had ever even considered it.
Scott Solano, DPA: Mr Draghi, I’ve got a couple of question from the viewers at Zero Hedge, and one of them goes like this: say the situation in Greece or Spain deteriorates even further, and they want to or are forced to step out of the Eurozone, is there a plan in place so that the markets don’t basically collapse? Is there some kind of structural system, structural safety net, especially in the area of derivatives? And the second questions is: you spoke earlier about the Emergency Liquidity Assistance, and what would have happened to the ELA in Cyprus, the approximately €10 billion, if the country had decided to leave the Eurozone?Mario Draghi, ECB: Well you really are asking questions that are so hypothetical that I don’t have an answer to them. Well, I may have a partial answer. These questions are formulated by people who vastly underestimate what the Euro means for the Europeans, for the Euro area. They vastly underestimate the amount of political capital that has been invested in the Euro. And so they keep on asking questions like: “If the Euro breaks down, and if a country leaves the Euro, it’s not like a sliding door. It’s a very important thing. It’s a project in the European Union. That’s why you have a very hard time asking people like me “what would happened if.” No Plan B.
Secondly, I think the ECB has shown its determination to fight any redenomination risk. And OMT with its precise rules and acting within its mandate, is there to this purpose. So that’s the answer to the first question.
The second question was about the ELA, but again it’s related to “if Cyprus leaves” and again we don’t have that in mind, so…. No Plan B.
We are happy to report that Zero Hedge is the first media outlet that Mario Draghi has very publicly, officially, and on the record, lied to.
Because as we learned overnight, Europe most certainly had a “plan in place so that the markets don’t basically collapse.” Only it wasn’t as Margio Draghi called it, Plan B.
It was a different letter of the alphabet. “(full article and Draghi’s statement here)
Keep up the good work, Zero Hedge 🙂
PS I wouldn’t be surprised if Mario Draghi comes out and claims “I didn’t lie. There was no Plan B. There was Plan Z but nobody asked me about.”
