Of course your plan is even more of pipe dream.

Oh, I don't expect the extortion to actually change ECB policy.

But when they default, that will cease to be Ireland's problem, and the Germans who get burned can take it up with Messrs. Stark and Weber, who bear the lion's share of the blame for the ECB's stupidity.

But on the ECB: There are 16 member states  of the ECB. If they wanted, they could send 16 Keynesian economist to Frankfurt. They don't do this. Instead they blame the ECB, a beast of their own creation.

Oh, but that is the whole point of this strategy: Pressure the €-zone countries into sending loose-money governors to the ECB.

That said, it really is undignified seeing you try to fob the blame off on someone else - anybody else - other than the last twenty years of German policymakers. The inflation mandate was a German idea - in fact, a German condition for joining the € in the first place. So was the General Stupidity Pact, by the way. And there is no doubt that German policy positions wield a disproportionate influence in the ECB. For that, you only have to look at its actual interest rate policy over the ten years of its existence as a functioning central bank: They have consistently favoured German macroeconomic policy at the expense of the interests of peripheral countries.

When you follow the money, you end up in Frankfurt.

- Jake

Austerity can only be implemented in the shadow of a concentration camp.