Bundesbank chief: Bond buying is ‘like a drug’

The head of Germany’s Bundesbank stepped up his opposition to the European Central Bank’s latest moves to battle the eurozone’s debt crisis yesterday, saying that plans to buy bonds risked becoming a drug on which governments would get hooked.

In the latest sign of a deepening rift within the ECB that has worried financial markets, Jens Weidmann warned in an interview in weekly Der Spiegel that the buying programme verged on the taboo for the bank of outright financing of governments.

He also hinted he was not alone at the ECB in his concern over the programme — in contrast to indications by the bank’s president Mario Draghi that Weidmann had been isolated in expressing reservations.