Christine Lagarde triggered a bond market sell-off on Thursday as she launched a package of measures to the economic chaos caused by the spread of coronavirus, saying it was not the European Central Bank’s role to respond to movements in government debt markets.
Her comments came after the ECB announced it would expand its quantitative easing programme with €120bn of extra bond purchases, launch a new programme of cheap loans to banks and make the rates on its existing bank lending scheme more favourable.
“We are not here to close spreads, this is not the function or the mission of the ECB,” said Ms Lagarde. “There are other tools for that and other actors to deal with those issues.”