Draghi signals prospects for QE have increased

European Central Bank president Mario Draghi said he can not exclude the risk of deflation in the eurozone, in a sign that the likelihood of large-scale quantitative easing is increasing.

“The risk that we don’t fulfill our mandate of price stability is higher than it was six months ago,” Draghi said in an interview with German newspaper Handelsblatt. “We are in technical preparations to alter the size, speed, and composition of our measures at the beginning of 2015, should this become necessary, to react to a too-long period of low inflation. There’s unanimity in the ECB council on that.”

Draghi rarely gives media interviews and his comments reflect a drive to win over critics of quantitative easing in Germany, the eurozone’s largest economy.