Nouriel Roubini's EconoMonitor website published a scathing piece by University of Oregon Professor Tim Duy on Friday (later tweeted by Roubini), in which Duy refers to a lack of concrete steps taken by European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi as "epic" and "almost funny if it wasn't so sad."
"Teetering on the abyss with record high unemployment putting the lie to his claims about the strength of the eurozone, Draghi chooses to play mind games with financial markets," Duy writes. "This marks a new low in European crisis management."
After Draghi's bold words about protecting the euro last week, markets expected him to deliver some sort of drastic action to do so and to relieve pressure on bond yields, which have climbed steadily higher for Spain and Italy. But the ECB "failed to meet the unintentionally ramped-up expectations" of financial market participants.
Indeed, the ECB "did exactly nothing," according to Duy. "No new policies, just vague promises about policies that may or may not be implemented in the future."