European Central Bank President Mario Draghi briefed German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble on quantitative-easing plans under which national central banks would buy bonds issued by their own country, Spiegel magazine reported.
The plan, which tries to avoid a transfer of risk between member states, envisages purchases in line with the ECB’s capital key, with a limit of 20 percent to 25 percent on each country’s debt, Spiegel said in an article published today, without saying where it got the information. Greece will be excluded from the program because its bonds don’t fulfill the necessary quality criteria, the magazine said.
An ECB spokesman declined to comment on the design of any QE program. A German government spokesman said earlier that Merkel and Draghi met on Jan. 14 for “regular informal talks,†while declining to comment on the topic.
