It was not until September 2014 that Draghi commenced “QE lite” by buying private asset-backed securities.27 Predictably, there was immediate indignation in Germany. The trigger for bolder action was a preliminary opinion issued on January 14, 2015, by the European Court of Justice, which decided in a case referred to it by the German supreme court that Draghi’s bond-buying scheme of 2012 had not constituted a prima facie breach of the ban on monetary financing.28 Without waiting for a final ruling, the ECB acted. On January 22, 2015, Draghi announced that until eurozone inflation stabilized
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