Mario Draghi, Into the Eye of Europe’s Financial Storm

MARIO DRAGHI was working the room as only Mario Draghi can.

The occasion was a gala at the Old Opera House here in honor of Jean-Claude Trichet, the most powerful central banker in Europe. But in some ways, the evening belonged as much to Mr. Draghi, the Italian who will succeed Mr. Trichet on Tuesday as the president of the European Central Bank in the midst of an economic maelstrom that threatens to tear apart the euro, if not Europe itself.

European leaders took a step toward resolving the crisis last Thursday, with an agreement from banks to take a 50 percent loss on the face value of their Greek debt. Far from heralding an end to the problems, however, the plan ushered in a crucial new phrase in the battle to avert financial disaster.

But despite the challenges awaiting him, Mr. Draghi was in fine form that night earlier this month. Over here, he chatted quietly with Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany and a main ally. Over there, he met with Christine LaGarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund. And everywhere, Mr. Draghi vowed that there would be no surprises on his watch.

It was vintage Draghi, a performance so subtle and politic that it seemed to please everyone. Which, it turns out, is the Draghi way: people often seem to see what they want to see in him.

One European central banker, for instance, predicted that Mr. Draghi would try to curtail a controversial central bank program intended to prop up financially weak nations like Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy — Mr. Draghi’s native country — by buying those nations’ government bonds on the open market.

The tactic, which in effect has turned the central bank into the lender of last resort from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, is deeply unpopular here in Germany, the Continent’s economic engine. Many here view the program as tantamount to a taxpayer-funded bailout of nations that should never have been let into the euro club to begin with.

But another high-ranking monetary official in Europe predicted just the opposite for Mr. Draghi: that he would be more willing to unleash the full power of the central bank. Both officials spoke on the condition they not be identified to avoid alienating him. Mr. Draghi declined to be interviewed for this article.

The question is whether Mr. Draghi, 63, can satisfy his competing constituencies as he confronts a euro-zone crisis that keeps testing the limits of policy-making.

“I can only guess where he will go with monetary policy,” says Carl B. Weinberg, the chief economist at High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, N.Y.

UNTIL last Thursday, when leaders outlined their latest plan, Mr. Trichet had long argued against a severe reduction in the value of Greece’s bonds. He had maintained that euro-zone economies must pay their debts, even if they are on the verge of insolvency, as Greece is.

Last July, in one of his first big speeches after his appointment had become official, and just before Greece would need a second bailout, Mr. Draghi seemed to break with Mr. Trichet.

“The solvency of sovereign states has ceased to be a foregone conclusion,” Mr. Draghi told bankers in Rome. It is too soon to tell whether he will adopt a more pragmatic, flexible approach at the central bank, which under Mr. Trichet came to be seen as rigid. It is the only major central bank that has not reduced interest rates to near zero.

Those closest to Mr. Draghi say his economic views have been shaped by his challenges at the Italian finance ministry in the 1990s, when Italy was expelled from the euro zone’s predecessor, the European Exchange Rate Mechanism and, like Greece today, came close to bankruptcy.

His record is not without controversy. In Italy and later, as a vice chairman for Goldman Sachs in Europe, Mr. Draghi was a proponent of nations and other institutions like pension funds using derivatives to more efficiently manage their liabilities. In some cases, many experts now contend, these transactions helped mask the finances of Greece and Italy before those nations were allowed into the euro.

People who know Mr. Draghi point to his time at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the late 1970s, when economists there emphasized taking a practical approach to solving economic problems, rather than hewing to a particular ideology.

“He is a pragmatist,” says Olivier J. Blanchard, the director of research at the International Monetary Fund who received his economic doctorate from M.I.T. in 1977, a year after Mr. Draghi.

Even so, Mr. Draghi is unlikely to challenge the founding dogma of the European Central Bank, which demands that it adhere to its German-inspired mandate to fight inflation. That he has been endorsed by Germany’s political and economic establishment suggests that he will be constrained from taking an unorthodox approach.

“I have a very high regard for him,” says Otmar Issing, the influential German economist and a former member of the central bank’s executive board.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/business/mario-draghi-into-the-eye-of-europes-financial-storm.html?partner=rss&emc=rss