Eurozone governments’ borrowing has rocketed to fund their response to the coronavirus pandemic, reigniting longstanding calls for the European Central Bank to ease debt burdens by forgiving sovereign bonds it owns.
The proposal was floated by academic economists as an answer to the single currency area’s last debt crisis in 2012. Senior Italian officials have recently stirred up the idea once more, suggesting the ECB could forgive debt bought through its asset purchase programme or swap it for perpetual bonds, which are never repaid. Source Financial Times
