A Miserable but Revealing Online Game

The European Central Bank has finally responded to overwhelming public demand and created an online game, €conomia, in which you get to direct monetary policy for the eurozone.  The game appears to reward achievement in a distressingly instructive manner.  According to Matt Yglesias:

…they grade you on the basis of a pure inflation targeting regime asymmetrically centered at 2 percent. I played a round in which inflation averaged -0.25% and we had a continent-wide depression in which output fell for twelve straight quarters. They gave me 2 stars out of four. I also ran a game in which inflation average[d] 4.16% and we had zero quarters of recession. They gave me zero stars even though in the higher inflation scenario I was closer to the 2% target!

So now you can wreck the European economy over the weekend.