Anyone hoping that the bitter animosity between Mario Draghi and Germany will be any less hostile this morning, following last week's guarantee by Draghi that all shall be well and the ECB will do "anything" to preserve the EUR, only to be followed by Germany's Schauble essentially saying this is certainly not the case, today we get a clarificationary follow up by Joerg-Uwe Hahn, a member of Merkel's junior coalition partner, FDP, who said that the German government should consider the "unusual step" of taking legal action against the European Central Bank over bond purchases. While Hahn's comments are for now seen fringe, the fact that Die Welt has openly broached the topic to an increasingly angrier population (and Spain's remarks that Germany itself has to be grateful for being bailed out after WWII will not help) will likely only strengthen the resolve of Germany to not relent to provocations by either Monti, as of the June 29 summit, but to demands from both Draghi and Juncker to accept that the ECB's printing utopia is in fact reality.
From Reuters [8]:
"The European treaties allow member states to sue the ECB," Hahn, a member of the ruling centre-right coalition in the state of Hesse, told Monday's edition of Die Welt newspaper, adding that Berlin should consider opening a lawsuit against the bank via the European Court of Justice.
"It's time to open the toolbox of the (EU's) Lisbon Treaty and see how one can ensure that the ECB is brought into line to focus on its original task: monetary stability," he said, acknowledging that this would be "an unusual step".
Hahn's comments were in response to a pledge last week by ECB President Mario Draghi that the ECB was ready to fight to save the euro. "Within our mandate, the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro," Draghi said.
Asked about Hahn's suggestion, a senior member of Merkel's Christian Democrats, Norbert Barthle, responded cautiously, telling Die Welt: "If Mario Draghi says the measures are legally covered by the mandate, then I believe him for now."
Naturally, as we showed earlier [9], "believing" the ECB's head traditionally leads to substantial losses, as Germany will soon find out. Most likely sooner rather than later, if there are more articles like this one appearing in the Frankfurter Allgemeine titled "Bailouts without End [10]."