Sage another, history has no sense of irony: Last Thursday, Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank (ECB), held a historic press conference in Frankfurt. For the first time in eleven years, the ECB raised its key interest rates again – and surprisingly significantly by 0.5 percentage points. The time of negative interest rates in the euro area is over for the time being, which many considered sorely necessary in view of the inflation rate of 8.6 percent recently.
A good 1,200 kilometers south of Frankfurt, in the Italian capital of Rome, a man stepped up to the lectern on the morning of the same day who shaped the fortunes of the ECB like no one before: Mario Draghi, ECB President from 2011 to 2019, gave a speech in the Chamber of Deputies announced in just a few words his resignation from the position of Prime Minister of Italy, which he had previously held for almost a year and a half. The “coalition of national unity” that had chosen him as head of government had collapsed.
