The resident market monetarist at Britain’s Daily Telegraph Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has a comment on European monetary policy under the leadership of the new ECB chief Mario Draghi.

Here is Ambrose:

“Those of a monetarist bent are less alarmed by fiscal contraction (than Keynesians). I have no doubt that monetary stimulus a l’outrance – the classic remedy of Britain’s Ralph Hawtrey, Sweden’s Gustav Cassel and America’s Irving Fisher in the 1930s – can counter the effects of fiscal tightening if conducted in the right way. The debt-to-GDP burden falls faster that way and deflation is averted, a lesson that Japan forgot.

The great question is whether Mario Draghi is embarking on just such a policy, covertly, through his Long-Term Repo Operations (LTRO), starting with €489bn in three-year loans to 523 banks December and to be followed by another blast in February.

The LTRO is not entirely a free lunch. It is replacing funding that has dried up, but to the extent that banks in Italy, Spain, France and Portugal use the cheap money to buy government bonds at rich yields – the Sarkozy “carry trade” – they are not lending to business, as newly bankrupt Spanair can attest…

…Yet, monetarists think Draghi is quietly pulling off a remarkable coup. “This is stealth QE: the impact is dulled because they are not making it clear what they are trying to do, but in the end it may ultimately be as powerful as QE in America and Britain,” said Lars Christensen from Danske Bank.

Tim Congdon from International Monetary Research said Mr Draghi had already boosted total credit to banks from €580bn to €832bn since early November, entirely reversing the Trichet tightening of late 2010.

This may rise to nearer €1.5 trillion this year. While it does not lead to a rise in broad money at first (just the monetary base), it is likely to feed through over coming months in complex secondary effects. “My conclusion is that the Draghi bazooka is such an aggressive example of monetary easing that Eurozone M3 growth will run at 5pc or more [annualized] in mid and late 2012.”

“I (Tim Congdon)remain sceptical about the viability of the European single currency in the long run, but the day of the execution has been postponed once again,” he said.

If Mr Draghi really is the Latin bloc’s monetarist avenger, the Germans will find out soon enough. It is Germany that will overheat, inflate, and suffer a “Latin” credit bubble as EMU’s wheel of fortune turns. Europe’s crisis will take on a whole new political turn. But that is a chapter for tomorrow.”

Needless to say I tend to agree with most things that Ambrose says (and I also find it hard to disagree with Tim). I particularly like that Ambrose mentions Hawtrey, Cassel and Fisher.

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Update: For those interested in my view on fiscal policy see here.