Watson Events

What Core, What Periphery? The European Crisis and the BRICs

What Core, What Periphery? The European Crisis and the BRICs


"Whipping Boy or Reluctant Savior: the European Central Bank and the Euro Crisis" 

Daniela Gabor, Bristol Business School, University of the West of England.

Why has the central bank of the Eurozone (ECB) become so contested? Whereas in its rhetoric this institution has called for ‘sound money’ foundational principles, its crisis interventions, particularly through the purchase of periphery government debt, have been portrayed as a detrimental postponing of the inevitable fiscal corrections in debt-ridden countries in the periphery of the Eurozone. However, the ECB’s contested practices have to be understood through a new politics of austerity produced by financial innovation and new forms of financial intermediation that in effect forces central banks like the ECB to have a different relationship with financial markets. 

Dr. Daniela Gabor is Associate Professor at Bristol Business School, UK. She worked as a consultant for ECLAC, Dunn and Bradstreet and various development projects in Central America. Her current research focuses on the relationship between governments, central banks and financial markets during economic crises. She is the author of Central Banking and Financialization: A Romanian Account of how Eastern Europe became Subprime (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

"Rescuing the Euro? The BRICs as Emerging Financial Superpowers" 

Cornel Ban, Postdoctoral Scholar of International Studies, Watson Institute for International Studies, and Deputy Director, Development Studies Program, Brown University.


Location: Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.