ECB May Intervene In Debt Crisis

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

The ECB has taken a new attitude toward the eurozone debt crisis. It has suggested it may support some of the region’s weak economies as they issue debt, perhaps through the purchase of some of this paper.

The central bank has made it clear that it will not act unless many of the EU nations agree to very strict budget terms. French president Sarkosy has begun to work to give assurances.

If the banks begins to intervene, it would be a change of heart brought on by the deepening crisis. Until now the ECB has said its only role in the region is to fight inflation. That would change radically if it began to aggressively buy debt issued by Italy and France. This would probably drive down rates and allow the countries to present budgets that the global capital markets would accept. In turn, investors would be more likely to buy sovereign paper at lower yields

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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