Bond-Buying Row: Top German quits European Central Bank

FRANKFURT: The top German official at the European Central Bank resigned unexpectedly on Friday in conflict with the bank’s policy of buying government bonds to combat the euro zone’s debt crisis. The ECB confirmed Executive Board Member Juergen Stark, the central bank’s chief economist, would leave “for personal reasons” by the end of the year once a replacement was found, after Reuters reported exclusively that he had quit. The euro fell and shares tumbled in Europe and on Wall Street on the shock development, which laid bare a rift inside the central bank over the handling of the worsening debt crisis, and could undermine German public support for the euro.



Published in The Express Tribune, September 11^th, 2011.