For the first time ever, the president of the ECB, Mario Draghi, has opened up to European-style quantitative easing. Yesterday, in response to an MEP, he not only said, as he did on other occasions, that the ECB is willing to take unconventional measures to counter deflation and ensure price stability around the 2% target, but he explicitly stated that it is possible , if the situation requires it, the "purchase of sovereign bonds" by the ECB itself.
It goes without saying that the financial markets, which had already started to retrace after the beatings of the last few days, were seized by a general euphoria and that the Stock Exchanges closed yesterday's day with a sharp rise. The best in Europe was Piazza Affari.
Now all eyes are on the Directory of 22 January when the ECB will have to assess whether the conditions for launching Qe have matured. The only temporal contraindication is linked to the Greek elections of January 25: it will be a question of evaluating whether to launch Qe immediately or do it after the vote in Athens.
It will also be essential to understand the composition of Qe: which bonds the ECB will want to buy, from which European states and to what extent. But now the markets have clearly perceived that Draghi is on his way to winning his battle once again by dribbling through the resistance of the Bundesbank by virtue of an iron agreement with Chancellor Merkel.
