Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke claims the “failure of European economic policy” played a significant role in the Greek debt crisis.

“Now is a good time to ask: Is Europe holding up its end of the bargain?" Bernanke asked in a blog post on the Brookings Institution website. "Specifically, is the euro zone's leadership delivering the broad-based economic recovery that is needed to give stressed countries like Greece a reasonable chance to meet their growth, employment, and fiscal objectives?”

He called the answer “obvious”: No.

“Since the global financial crisis, economic outcomes in the euro zone have been deeply disappointing,” wrote Bernanke, who headed the Fed from 2006 to 2014 and now works as a Brookings Institution economist.

Bernanke argued that the economic policy failure of eurozone leaders has allowed unemployment in the eurozone to remain high since the 2008 crisis, and has enabled vast employment disparities between northern Europe and southern Europe.

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