Business Post's View

Editorial: A decade-long party is over as ECB finally wakes up to inflation danger

The ending of the European Central Bank’s stimulus bond programme should at least bring a bit of stability, but it is otherwise difficult to predict what impact the move could have

Christine Lagarde and her colleagues at the ECB now seem to have woken up to the threat posed by surging consumer prices Picture: Getty

It will probably have gone unnoticed by the average consumer here, but last week’s announcement by the European Central Bank (ECB) that it will end its multibillion-euro bond-buying programme and begin raising interest rates from July is a landmark moment.

It signals an end to the era of ultra-loose monetary policies that has defined Europe’s financial system for the last decade, where interest rates were cut to unprecedented negative territory and billions of euro in ...