ECB cuts interest rates to -0.50%

Restarting quantitative easing

The European Central Bank has put interest rates further into negative territory with a 10 basis point cut to -0.50%, it announced on Thursday (12 September).

The central bank also said it would restart its quantitative easing (QE) policy from 1 November, at a monthly rate of €20bn. The cut in the interest rate represents a fresh all-time low for the Continent. In its press release, the ECB's governing council said it "expects the key ECB interest rates to remain at their present or lower levels until it has seen the inflation outlook robustly converge to a level sufficiently close to, but below, 2% within its projection horizon, and such convergence has been consistently reflected in underlying inflation dynamics". Mario Draghi made the cu...