ECB wary of threat from China economy

A day after Mario Draghi presented a sobering economic outlook for the eurozone, the nervousness coursing through the ECB was underscored by a fellow policymaker.

There is serious uncertainty at the moment because you don’t know exactly whether this is a pothole on the road or a landslide,” said Ewald Nowotny, the head of Austria’s central bank and member of the ECB’s policy-setting Governing Council, of which Draghi is president.

Nowotny was referring to the new threats to the world and eurozone economies from China’s slowdown and market turmoil. As a result, there is increased pressure on the ECB to bolster its money-printing quantitative easing more than planned.