Time for the Fed to Take Over the ECB’s Job?

Dean Baker says the Fed should step in if the ECB refuses to act as a lender of last resort (Antonio Fatas is also frustrated with the ECB's failure to act):

Time for the Fed to Take Over the European Central Bank’s Job, by Dean Baker, Al Jazeera English: The European Central Bank (ECB) has been working hard to convince the world that it is not competent to act as central bank. One of the main responsibilities of a central bank is to act as the lender of last resort in a crisis. The ECB is insisting that it will not fill this role. It ... would sooner see the eurozone collapse than risk inflation exceeding its 2.0 percent target.

It would be bad enough if the ECB’s incompetence just put Europe’s economy at risk. ... However, it is also likely that the financial panic following the collapse of the euro will lead to the same sort of financial freeze-up that we saw following the collapse of Lehman. In this case,... we will be seeing unemployment possibly rising into a 14-15 percent range. This would be a really serious disaster.

Fortunately, the Fed has the tools needed to prevent this sort of meltdown. It can simply take the steps that the ECB has failed to do. First and most importantly it has to guarantee the sovereign debt of eurozone countries. ... This doesn’t mean giving the eurozone countries a blank check. The Fed can adjust the interest rate at which it guarantees debt depending on the extent to which countries reform their fiscal systems. ... The difference between a 2.0 percent interest rate and 7.0 percent interest would be a powerful incentive to eliminate corruption and waste. ...

Of course this sort of intervention will look horrible from the standpoint of the eurozone countries. It will appear as though they cannot be trusted to manage their own central bank and deal with their own economic affairs.

Unfortunately, this is the case. They have entrusted the continent’s most important economic institution to a group of ideological zealots who are infatuated by the sight of low inflation rates...

Perhaps the Europeans will respond... But if they can’t rise to the task, we should not allow the ECB ideologues to wreak havoc on the lives of tens of millions of innocent people in Europe, the developing world, and here in the United States.

While the Fed is solving the world's problems, it might also think about the high rates of unemployment that already exist in the US, and how easing policy at home could help.