The European Central Bank yesterday sent markets its strongest signal yet that it would deploy unlimited monetary firepower to save the single currency.
Mario Draghi, the central bank’s Italian president, said that the ECB would offer to purchase eurozone countries’ short-term bonds in the secondary market in a programme dubbed outright monetary transactions, or OMT, that would address “distortions in financial markets”.
But he warned that any attempt to tame Europe’s distressed sovereign debt markets would come with the kind of tough fiscal and structural reform conditions that Greece, Ireland and Portugal faced when they were bailed out.