ECB's Lagarde Sees Euro as a Global Reserve Currency

Beyond Good and Evil

ECB President Christine Lagarde on Tuesday once again called for a leadership role for the euro in the global economy.

According to her assessment, the Eurozone is today a passive observer, forced to endure shocks from Washington and other financial centers.

A glimpse into the obscure world of ECB officials, who see themselves as victims.

They present themselves as the masters of money — the central bankers.

Their influence on real-world politics and economic developments must not be underestimated, especially in times of exploding national debt.

They are the backstop of politics.

They are the ones who, through massive interventions in currency and bond markets, attempt to keep government budgets, long sinking in the swamp of debt, afloat.

And they are increasingly in competition with each other.

Since the U.S. under President Donald Trump made it unmistakably clear that the transatlantic cuddle course — in view of European censorship, expansive state intervention, and green transformation — belongs to the past, the ECB's monetary policy has come under intensified market scrutiny.

Quite Recently, ECB President Christine Lagarde appeared at an event organized by Business France in Paris — delivering a speech that made waves internationally.

At a time when political credibility is increasingly negotiated on the capital markets, such appearances send signals far beyond the conference hall.

In her speech, Christine Lagarde painted an unusual overall picture — a narrative that clearly fits into the ongoing currency war with the United States.

Between the lines, she suggested a general loss of confidence in the U.S. dollar, without explicitly naming the supposed culprit.

Additionally, she implied that Donald Trump's abandonment of climate policy and deregulation of the U.S. economy was erratic, shaking investor confidence in the American capital market.

Nothing could be further from reality.

The U.S. economy is currently growing at nearly four percent, with investments roughly 14 % above the long-term average. An economic powerhouse defined by stability and confidence.

Exactly this is likely a thorn in the side of the currency watchers in the ECB Tower and the central planners of the Brussels Commission.

While market-driven dynamism is returning to the U.S. after the stifling Biden years, Europe’s own model — driven by central planning and CO₂ dogma — remains deeply mired in economic distortions.

The transatlantic gap is glaring.

It's truly bizarre when Christine Lagarde speaks of being a “powerless observer” of political decisions made elsewhere — especially in Washington.

Her institution, the European Central Bank, which has long merged with Brussels' power architecture into a political unit, plays a central role in propping up Brussels’ eco-socialist agenda through massive bond market interventions.

The ECB was not a bystander but an active architect of this course.

While Lagarde today feigns the role of powerless observer, her bank is in fact one of the key actors keeping this fragile system alive, now crumbling before her eyes.

The European Union and the ECB love to cast themselves in the victim role.

The very actors who confront European citizens with heavy-handed measures such as private chat monitoring or censorship laws like the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act, shielding their power from criticism, present themselves as victims.

What Christine Lagarde demands is nothing less than a deepening of the monetary union — the next step toward a comprehensive banking union.

This is preparation for what Brussels has already quietly planned: the gradual consolidation of national debts under the EU Commission, always kept liquid by the ECB’s money printer — a power project Brussels and Frankfurt have long committed to, to the detriment of democratic control and national sovereignty.

Christine Lagarde sees the euro — a currency that lost its largest single buyer, Russia, after the cessation of Russian gas imports and has since been gradually declining in global significance — as poised to become a new global reserve currency.

The push forward is intended, among other things, through the introduction of euro stablecoins, eurobonds, and structural reforms in the Eurozone economy.

Lagarde leaves unanswered the question of who will actually implement these structural reforms. She likely referred to the €800 billion investment package her predecessor Mario Draghi presented as a universal panacea for Europe’s problems.

In Brussels, Draghi’s advice is followed, plunging headlong into debt: the planned seven-year budget of the Commission totals €2 trillion — including €750 billion for the climate economy and €130 billion for the military-industrial complex of the new crony economy.

At the ECB, no one notices the contradiction: how can the euro become a trusted global reserve currency amid these mountains of debt?

They represent nothing less than a massive expansion of the money supply, exerting growing depreciation pressure on the currency.

Who would voluntarily hold a currency whose debts are neither collateralized nor energy-secured, but backed solely by an economically exhausted European taxpayer and the central bank’s printing press?

Christine Lagarde and her colleagues have inherited the poisoned legacy of Draghi's "Whatever it takes" principle — unlimited backing of state debt with the printing press has become the foundation of European monetary and fiscal policy.

While the Federal Reserve demonstrates the stability of the U.S. economy with real positive interest rates, the ECB remains the indispensable backstop of Europe’s shrinking economy and debt-heavy states — a guarantor for financing numerous socialist programs on the capitals’ and Brussels’ agenda.

The ECB is not only the guardian of the euro; it is the safety net and lifeline of a system that would have collapsed without permanent monetary support.

And the markets know it.

So when Lagarde speaks of addressing domestic economic problems through appropriate reforms, the world knows: the money pump will be switched on to flood the dried-up subsidy channels of the green crony economy.

Lost capital, lost confidence.

In this modus operandi, the euro will never become a global reserve currency.

The numbers confirm this. About 84% of global trade is still invoiced in U.S. dollars. The euro accounts for roughly 7%, far from challenging the greenback.

While global foreign exchange reserves show a slightly different picture — 58% in U.S. dollars and 20% in euros — this does not change the verdict: the euro is no real competitor to the U.S. dollar.

The ideological rift between the U.S. and EU becomes fully visible once the ECB introduces the digital euro.

Behind the technocratic façade lies not a mere modernization step but an attempt to gain full control over cross-border transfers, prevent capital flight, and establish the currency as a political instrument of discipline.

The plan is transparent: those who oppose politically — whether against Brussels' climate dogma, the Ukraine war, or the increasing centralization of power — will lose access to their digital wallet, fully controllable at any time.

A diabolical scheme undermining individual sovereignty, nearing completion.

Just like censorship, chat monitoring, and eco-socialist regulatory mania, it will inevitably lead to a socio-political fiasco.

On October 14, the European Parliament will debate the introduction of chat monitoring — or, in other words, the end of postal privacy.

All factions will lay their cards on the table. We will see who truly stands with the citizens, who defends the values of a free civilization, and who upholds the foundations of civic liberty.

Many likely will not.

Thomas Kolbe, born in 1978 in Neuss/ Germany, is a graduate economist. For over 25 years, he has worked as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.