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The European Central Bank has hit the launch button on its 1.1 trillion euro ($1.2 trillion) stimulus program by starting to buy government bonds. The chief monetary authority for the 19 countries that use the euro confirmed Monday it had begun the purchases, which aim to make credit cheaper, boost growth and raise inflation. ECB President Mario Draghi had announced the start date last week, sending stocks higher and the euro lower.

The long-anticipated collapse of the euro is here. When European Central Bank president Mario Draghi unveiled an open-ended quantitative easing program worth at least 60 billion euros a month on Thursday, stocks soared but the euro plummeted like a rock. It hit an 11 year low of $1.13, and many analysts believe that it is going much, much lower than this. The speed at which the euro has been falling in recent months has been absolutely stunning. Less than a year ago it was hovering near $1.40. But since that time the crippling economic problems in southern Europe have gone...

In the wake of ECB's €60 billion a month QE madness (see "QE already Working" Says IMF Lagarde; Ho-Hum Details Announced; Gold the Place to Be), one might be wondering what it may do to European bond yields. German 10-Year Bond Yield image: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-of_KecAryfU/VMKLTNvRyfI/AAAAAAAAcFk/6Kswiqag_hg/s400/German%2B10-Year%2Bbond%2Byield.png click on chart for sharper image Since September of 2013, yield on the German 10-year bond has plunged from around 2% to 0.367%. ECB Risks German Bonds Mismatch Exceeding 100 Billion Euros With €720 billion annual asset purchases, a huge portion of the bonds the ECB buys will be German. Bloomberg explains ECB Risks German Bonds...

The economic prophet who foresaw the Lehman crisis with uncanny accuracy is even more worried about the world's financial system going into 2015. Beggar-thy-neighbour devaluations are spreading to every region. All the major central banks are stoking asset bubbles deliberately to put off the day of reckoning. This time emerging markets have been drawn into the quagmire as well... "We are in a world that is dangerously unanchored," said William White, the Swiss-based chairman of the OECD's Review Committee. "We're seeing true currency wars and everybody is doing it, and I have no idea where this is going to end."...

First Swiss Franc, now Euro... RBC TO CHARGE NEGATIVE INTEREST ON EURO-DENOMINATED BALANCES — Russian Market (@russian_market) January 21, 2015 Opinion: Think negative interest rates can’t happen here? Think again In the last week, the markets have had to get used to the idea of the negative interest rate, where you actually get charged for keeping money in the bank rather than going out and spending it. So far, that is restricted to two relatively small economies, both of which are struggling with the likely launch of a massive program of quantitative easing this week in the eurozone. But what...

FRANKFURT — The European Central Bank said on Thursday that it would begin buying hundreds of billions of euros worth of government bonds in an ambitious — though some say belated — attempt to prevent the eurozone from becoming trapped in long-term economic stagnation. The bank’s president, Mario Draghi, said the central bank would begin buying bonds worth 60 billion euros, or about $69.7 billion, a month. That is more spending than the €50 billion a month that many analysts had been expecting. The long-awaited program, known as quantitative easing, comes after inflation in the 19 countries of the eurozone...

European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi announced the launch of an open-ended, expanded monthly 60 billion euro ($70 billion) private and public bond-buying program on Thursday. The long-anticipated introduction of euro zone government bond purchases will bring the ECB's buying program into line with the U.S. Federal Reserve's quantitative easing (QE). The program will be open-ended, lasting until at least 2016, Draghi told reporters at his regular media conference on Thursday, and will start in March this year. The hope is that it will boost the region's painfully low inflation rate, which came in at an annual minus 0.2...