The European Central Bank unveiled today a massive bond-buying stimulus program to kick-start the region's economy and battle deflation.
"The combined monthly purchases of private and public sector securities will amount to 60 billion euros," ECB President Mario Draghi said at a news conference in Frankfurt, Germany.
He said the program will continue until September 2016 or until inflation reaches about 2 percent — effectively ensuring that at least 1 trillion euros ($1.16 trillion) will be injected into the eurozone economy.
NPR's John Ydstie tells our Newscast unit that the program, which is modeled on the U.S. Federal Reserve's quantitative easing, is more aggressive than expected. He says:
"The Fed's program is credited with helping boost U.S. growth following the great recession. Despite its success in the U.S., Europe has been slow to adopt it largely because of objections from Germany which shuns borrowing and fears inflation. But when the Eurozone fell into dangerous deflation in December, those objections were overcome."
The ECB also announced that its governing council kept "the interest rate on the main refinancing operations and the interest rates on the marginal lending facility and the deposit facility ... unchanged at 0.05%, 0.30% and -0.20% respectively."
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