ECB's Draghi: Premature to talk of loan exit

The press conferences following the European Central Bank's monthly monetary policy decisions have been pretty uneventful as of late. On every first or second Thursday of the month, ECB President Mario Draghi is happy to remind reporters at the ECB press conference just how in control of European sovereign debt markets the central bank is.

The press conferences following the European Central Bank’s monthly monetary policy decisions have been pretty uneventful as of late. On every first or second Thursday of the month, ECB President Mario Draghi is happy to remind reporters at the ECB press conference just how in control of European sovereign debt markets the central bank is.

FRANKFURT — The European Central Bank kept interest rates steady on Thursday and is likely to eschew dramatic action to help Italy or other eurozone countries, despite the threat of political turmoil in Rome reigniting the bloc’s debt crisis. At its monthly policy meeting, the ECB held its main refinancing rate at a record-low 0.75%, in line with what the majority of economists in a Reuters poll had expected. The attention turns now to a 8:30 a.m. news conference, held by ECB President Mario Draghi, himself an Italian.

What was wrong with Cyprus’s economy doesn’t stop being wrong if they are outside the euro FRANKFURT — The European Central Bank put the blame for initial market turmoil over Cyprus’s bailout squarely on the island’s government on Thursday and pledged that taxing depositors would not become normal procedure.

Economic Times reports European Central Bank mulls caps on borrowing costs The European Central Bank is considering buying the bonds of crisis-wracked eurozone countries to ensure borrowing costs do not rise beyond a pre-determined level, German newsweekly Der Spiegel said Sunday.

FRANKFURT — The banker now in charge of rescuing the euro wants his top staff to take Sundays off. Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, eschews long meetings and refrains from lecturing his colleagues, senior ECB officials say. Until Draghi took over a year ago, insiders say, the bank had a workaholic, micro-managed regime. But even as the Italian has proved ready to intervene in the markets and try policies that would have been unthinkable a few years ago, he has brought a freer, more hands-off culture to the bank.