German daily Der Spiegel kicked the hornet's nest on Monday, publishing a piece that indicated the ECB was preparing to unleash unconditional yield targeting of troubled sovereign bonds. Essentially this means the institution headed by Mario Draghi would be willing to buy unlimited amounts of sovereign bonds from, say Spain and Italy, to lower their borrowing costs and defend the integrity of the monetary union. This seems highly unlikely as it would directly contradict the ECB’s most recent statements which call for conditionality, meaning specific countries need to request aid and accept a difficult Troika program.
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