Most investors think of the euro as the old German deutsche mark. That’s why it’s worth so much against other currencies. Thus it follows that the same investors assume that the ECB is the old Bundesbank.
That’s apparently what Stark thought, too, before he resigned from five years of being the EU Central Bank Executive Board’s German member and enforcer of Bundesbank teachings about inflation and financial stability.
This thinking is so pervasive with most Germans that it doesn’t matter what your political allegiance is, whether you are Communist or Nazi, you are conservative about economics. There is a rumor being reported that Germans are printing Deutsche marks to keep on hand when they pull out of the euro.