Unconventional emergency measures to boost the eurozone economy could prove difficult for the ECB to implement, a member of its governing council has warned, highlighting the institution’s nervousness about following such steps in the US and UK. A programme of “quantitative easing” – the creation of money to buy assets – would be “much more complicated in the eurozone context than some people might believe”, Yves Mersch, Luxembourg’s central bank governor, told the FT, reflecting reluctance among ECB policymakers to cut rates much below the current 2%, while the Fed and Bank of England have aggressively cut policy rates to near-zero.

This entry was posted by Gwen Robinson on Monday, January 26th, 2009 at 5:31 and is filed under Capital markets. Tagged with ecb. Edit this entry.