The German constitutional court, from its seat at Karlsruhe, has hurled a grenade into the European Union by ruling that the European Central Bank’s mass purchase of bonds to help Eurozone nations’ economic recovery partially violates the German constitution. It believes there is not sufficient German oversight of the operation, creating moral hazard for the interests of German taxpayers. It follows that participation in the ECB’s quantitative easing programme by the Bundesbank would be illegal and it is the Bundesbank that plays the leading role in the counsels of the ECB.