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ECB bond buys come under fire
ECB POLICYMAKER and Bundesbank president Axel Weber has urged a tight cap on the European Central Bank’s government bond buying programme, saying extraordinary steps taken to ease the debt crisis posed a risk to its main goal of price stability.
The ECB abandoned a long-held resistance to buying government debt in May, helping to calm bond markets and bring down borrowing costs for Greece and other financially strained eurozone members.
ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet defended the move as a necessary intervention, though Weber said yesterday that the bond buying had to be targeted precisely and tightly limited in scale to minimise risk.