ECB's Draghi confesses that monetary policies can only buy time

The ECB's Mario Draghi ended the myth that monetary policy can do anything to bring the current bank solvency led financial crisis to an end.

He then goes on to say who can bring an end to the current financial crisis:  the governments and the banks.

The governments can do this by abandoning the Japanese model for handling a bank solvency led financial crisis and adopting the Swedish model.  Under the Japanese model, governments have played for time while praying for a miracle to bailout the global economy.

Under the Swedish model for handling a bank solvency led financial crisis, Wall Street (the banks) rescue Main Street.  The banks do this by absorbing the losses on the excesses in the financial system and not imposing the drag from these losses on the real economy.

According to the ECB's Draghi

the LTRO operations had succeeded in "buying time" for policymakers to solve the long-running sovereign debt crisis. 

"The LTROs have been quite timely and all in all successful and if the only thing we managed was to buy time, then that is an extraordinary success," he said. 

"Buying time is not a minor achievement." 

Nevertheless, the ECB could only do so much and "the ball is entirely, squarely in the court of governments and banks, and they have to use this time," he insisted.