Helping the ECB Cross the Rubicon

Eurozone monetary officials are expected to make history when they gather for the European Central Bank’s next policy-setting meeting on January 22. Observers anticipate that ECB President Mario Draghi and his colleagues will finally cross the Rubicon and announce the launch of a large-scale program of quantitative easing (QE) – in other words, high-volume purchases of government bonds. Though the ECB has resisted QE for more than five years, even as other major central banks embraced it, Executive Board member Benoît Coeuré has already called it the “baseline option.” More...