ECB to ramp up bond purchases

The European Central Bank said it would step up its bond-purchase stimulus to support an economy whose recovery is expected to lag a year behind the rebound in the U.S., held back by slow vaccine rollouts and less relief spending by governments.

The central bank for the 19 countries that use the euro said Thursday that over the next quarter the purchases would be conducted “at a significantly higher pace than during the first months of the year.”

The move is aimed at preventing a premature rise in borrowing costs while businesses are still struggling with coronavirus restrictions.

China was the only major economy to grow last year.

Re “Boundaries are being erased in American culture” (Other Views, March 5): As usual, Cal Thomas’ romantic view of the past, fundamentalism, false equivalences and an erroneous basic assumption are deployed to create a fiction. To begin, “American culture,” among other evils, once prominently included homophobia, which was supported by discrimination, marginalization, persecution and sometimes legal prosecution.

That equal rights, opportunity and justice for the LGBTQ community are supported overwhelmingly by American citizens (as proven by the “public opinion polls” Thomas disparages), and on the verge of becoming the law of the land, are testimony to “the arc of the moral universe” cited by Martin Luther King Jr. As repeatedly attested to by the scientific community, LGBTQ proclivities are not a chosen lifestyle, but inherent tendencies ingrained in part by the contents and processes of genetic inheritance. Equating them to polygamists’ demands is a false comparison meant solely to alarm.