ECB Draghi Announces Plans to Kickstart EU Economy, Euro Plummets

MOSCOW, January 22 (Sputnik) – The head of the European Central Bank (ECB) Mario Draghi announced on Thursday the launch of an extended 60-billion-euro per month bond-buying program, which stipulates the purchase of public and private sector securities.

The program is due to start in March and is expected to end in September 2016.

At 13:52 GMT, the Euro was edging lower to the US dollar, trading at 1.15 to the US dollar, 0,59% down compared with late Wednesday close.

Prior to the ECB’s announcement, the Euro was trading at 1,16 to the US national currency.

"We decided to keep the key ECB interest rates unchanged," Draghi also said.

Mitch Feierstein, a hedge-fund manager and chief executive of the Glacier Environmental Fund Limited, has described the ECB decision on QE as a “Ponzi scheme akin to Monetary Heroin.”

“Simply stated, the ECB’s QE is a back door banking bailout that transfers risks to the balance sheet of EU Taxpayers,” Feierstein told Sputnik news agency Thursday.

Feierstein compared the injection of the money into the Eurozone’s ailing economy to the fate of heroin, branded as a “safe, non-addictive” substitute for morphine by Bayer at the turn of the twentieth century. Even though Bayer terminated its global sales of heroin in 1913, as the company realized the unintended consequences of its use, the drug was not withdrawn or made illegal in US markets until 1924.

“Coincidentally, that's the same 25-year duration as Japan’s lost decades and failed QE infinity programs,” Feierstein told Sputnik.

ECB’s President Mario Draghi earlier deemed the quantitative easing program as a “bazooka.”