Central banks are the doctors of the world financial system, armed with potent antidotes to economic ills. On Thursday the European Central Bank set out to diagnose and cure the problems of the eurozone; but it gave too small a dose.
By administering medicine – more liquidity and the resumption of Irish and Portuguese bond purchases – it warned the patient of the dangers, while failing to provide enough anaesthetic.
Not-so-patient investors did not wait for a second opinion. They dumped equities, pushing the S&P 500, FTSE 100, Dow, Nasdaq Composite and emerging markets into correction territory, with falls from post-crisis peaks of more than 10 per cent. Germany’s Dax is down 14 per cent. France’s CAC 40 looks more like the European periphery, with a 20 per cent fall putting it in a bear market.