ECB considers mess left by decade of greed

THERE has been an implicit assumption since the US subprime scandal broke last August and the Federal Reserve Bank started to cut interest rates, that the ECB had almost a moral obligation to take the lead from the US central bank by cutting rates immediately.

The fear was the global economy would be brought to its knees as banks stopped lending to each other.

The problem was many of them were exposed to the US mortgage-lending debacle and nobody knew the extent of the exposure for individual banks.