WASHINGTON: The European Central Bank will not stop short in rolling out its trillion-euro-plus money printing scheme, its president said on Thursday, playing down fears that quantitative easing could blow price bubbles.
Mario Draghi's clear commitment, delivered in Washington to an audience at the International Monetary Fund, shows there is little prospect of paring back the fledgling programme that was launched despite the reservations of euro zone paymaster Germany.
"After almost 7 years of a debilitating sequence of crises, firms and households are very hesitant to take on economic risk," Draghi told an audience that included IMF chief Christine Lagarde. "For this reason quite some time is needed before we can declare success."
Draghi said that although the 60-billion-euro-a-month of purchases, chiefly of government bonds, were lifting asset prices and confidence, he also wanted them to boost investment and price inflation.
"We will implement in full our purchase programme as announced and, in any case, until we see a sustained adjustment in the path of inflation," he said.
The Italian head of the ECB also responded to critics who argue that such money printing, or quantitative easing (QE), could fuel price bubbles in property or sap savings, playing down such concerns.
"At the moment there is little indication that generalised financial imbalances are emerging."
Draghi recently described speculation that the fledgling QE scheme, which is due to last until September 2016, would be scaled back as surprising.
Reuters
