In hopes of pumping up the rapidly-deflating euro — and the 19 European Union economies that it calls home — the European Central Bank has decided to start down the financial path already trod by the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan, instituting its own bond-buying programme known as “quantitative easing”, which Mario Draghi, ECB president, hinted at in his famed “big bazooka/whatever it takes” speech in July 2012.

As Draghi explained in a press conference on 22 January, the impetus for the programme’s launch is two-fold: “First, inflation dynamics have continued to be weaker than expected. … This assessment is underpinned by a further fall in market-based measures of inflation expectations over all horizons and the fact that most indicators of actual or expected inflation stand at, or close to, their historical low.

“Second, while the monetary policy measures adopted between June and September last year resulted in a material improvement