Mario Draghi has joined most of the world’s other major central bankers in halting his crisis-era economic stimulus programme, announcing yesterday that the European Central Bank would called time on its contentious €2.6tn bond-buying programme.
The decision, reached unanimously by the ECB governing council, ends nearly four years of monthly purchases of new government and corporate bonds in the eurozone, a policy Mr Draghi credited with occasionally being “the only driver of this recovery”.
Although the ECB has long signalled it would end new purchases this month, the move marked a milestone for the eurozone, which will now be left to manage its economy with more traditional tools such as interest rate changes.