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The article reports that the European Central Bank will stop adding to its stock of government and corporate bonds at the end of December 2018, the so-called quantitative easing program it has used to hold down interest rates and encourage lending. Topics discussed include implication of the wind-down of the bond-buying program and quantitative easing as of the eurozone.

FRANKFURT -- The European Central Bank disclosed Monday that it had bought 16.5 billion euros in bonds in the first week since taking the unprecedented step of intervening in markets to halt a sell-off of Greek and other European debt. The bank did not say which countries' debt it was buying, how much it would spend in the future, or whether it bought any corporate bonds. The 16.5 billion euros ($21 billion) was considered a relatively small amount for the market. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Bank of England and the European Central Bank both cut key interest rates by half a percentage point on Thursday, pushing the rates to their lowest levels ever. At the same time, the British central bank took an unprecedented step intended to pump cash into the economy by buying government and corporate bonds. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]