European Central Bank President Mario Draghi may have shelved the bank’s controversial bond-purchase program.
The Frankfurt-based ECB said today it hasn’t bought any government bonds for two straight weeks, the first pause since August. The purchases have dwindled since the ECB funneled a record 489 billion euros ($655 billion) of three-year loans into the banking system in December, fueling a bond-market rally and reducing the need to intervene with its Securities Markets Program.
