Germany should agree to demands for the European
Central Bank (ECB) to print more euros and guarantee the public debts
of eurozone members or leave the common currency area, former Italian
prime minister Silvio Berlusconi said Friday.
The ECB "must change its mission, it must become the final
guarantor of (eurozone member states') public debt and begin to print
money," Berlusconi said in remarks posted on his Facebook site.
"Otherwise ... we should have the strength to say 'ciao ciao euro'
and thus exit the euro while remaining in the European Union, or ask
Germany to leave the euro if she doesn't agree," Berlusconi added.
Berlusconi, whose party remains the largest in parliament, called
on Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti to "change its political line"
and act "forcefully" with the ECB.
"My crazy idea is that the Bank of Italy should print euros or
start printing our (own) currency," Berlusconi said in an apparent
reference to Italy's former currency, the lira.
"I invite you to deeply consider this," the media mogul said.
Berlusconi resigned last November following a series of scandals
and amid a record rise in Italy's borrowing costs, apparently fuelled
by investors' concern over the country's ability to repay its public
debt of almost 2 trillion euros ($2.6 trillion).
Monti's technocratic, unelected government depends on the support
in parliament of Berlusconi's conservative People of Freedom and the
main center-left Democratic Party.
