经济学人下载:欧元区--撕毁规则(1)

Christine Lagarde took over as the president of the European Central Bank (ECB) in November intent on peacemaking.
11月，克里斯蒂娜·拉加德接任欧洲央行（ECB）行长，致力于调停。

The bank's negative interest rates and bond-buying were reviled in the euro area's northern countries.
该银行的负利率和债券购买计划遭到了欧元区北部国家的痛骂。

In order to heal the rift Ms Lagarde launched a year-long review of the ECB's strategy. Few investors expected policy to change much in 2020.
为了弥合分歧，拉加德对ECB的战略进行了为期一年的评估。几乎没有投资者预计到2020年政策会有太大变化。

Covid-19 upended all that. On March 18th the ECB announced an emergency asset-purchase scheme
Covid-19颠覆了这一切。3月18日，ECB宣布了一项紧急资产购买计划，

that would buy 750bn euros ($809bn) in government and corporate bonds.
将购买7500亿欧元（合8090亿美元）的政府和企业债券。

With its existing programmes, the bank will hoover up over 1trn euros in assets this year—equivalent to 9% of euro-area GDP.
根据现有的计划，该银行今年将吸纳超过1万亿欧元的资产——相当于欧元区GDP的9%。

But even this might not be enough to gin up the economy.
但即便这可能也不足以刺激经济。

The severity of the pandemic means that the ECB has been bolder and considerably more flexible than economists
丹麦银行的皮耶特·克里斯蒂安森表示，全球流行病的严重性意味着ECB

would have thought possible a few months ago, says Piet Christiansen of Danske Bank.
比几个月前经济学家所认为的可能程度要大胆得多，也要灵活得多。

In large part that is because the ECB is amending some of the rules that have until now governed its asset purchases.
这在很大程度上是因为，ECB正在修改迄今为止一直支配其资产购买的一些规则。

One self-imposed rule concerns the composition of purchases.
一个自我强加的规则涉及到购买的组成。

The ECB generally tries to buy government bonds in proportion to the capital each member state puts into it (or its "capital key"),
ECB一般会根据每个成员国投入的资本（或其“资本额比重”）的比例购买政府债券，

which is roughly in line with the size of its economy. This time the bank will be more flexible.
这与它的经济规模大致相符。这一次，央行将更加灵活。

It could, for example, buy more Italian and Spanish bonds, even though these together account for around a quarter of the capital key.
例如，央行会从意大利和西班牙购买更多债券，尽管这些加起来约占资本额比重的四分之一。

As the virus spread across the south of the euro zone,
随着病毒在欧元区南部蔓延，

investors had begun to demand a higher premium for holding southern states' bonds—
投资者已经开始要求持有南部各州债券的更高溢价——

and Ms Lagarde did not help when she remarked that she did not consider it the ECB's job to close yield spreads.
拉加德也没有帮上忙，她表示她不认为ECB的职责是消除收益率差。

The announcement of the emergency bond purchases helped to calm those nerves.
紧急债券购买计划的宣布有助于缓解这些紧张情绪。

More controversially, the ECB says its emergency purchases will not be bound by its self-imposed "issuer limit",
更有争议的是，ECB称其紧急购买将不受自身强加的“发行者限制”的约束，

which had meant that it could not hold more than a third of a member's sovereign debt.
这意味着ECB不能持有一个成员国超过三分之一的主权债务。

Its holdings of German and Dutch bonds have been fast approaching the cap.
它持有的德国和荷兰债券已经迅速接近上限。