2020 turned out to be another testing year for the eurozone. Doubts about national governments’ fiscal firepower to tackle the pandemic, enhanced by comments by ECB president Christine Lagarde that it wasn’t the central bank's job to keep spreads narrow and she had no intention of her own whatever-it-takes moment, brought back euro crisis memories. It took a while, but in all fairness, national fiscal stimulus, cheap funding for countries in need, the ECB’s pandemic emergency purchase programme and finally the Recovery and Resilience Fund (RRF) marked an unprecedented policy reaction, both in terms of size and ... (full story)