>
Article snippet: FRANKFURT — The European Central Bank appeared ready on Thursday to begin dismantling a decade’s worth of emergency measures that helped keep the eurozone from disintegrating during the financial crisis. The bank’s action, widely expected to come after a meeting of its Governing Council, highlights the eurozone economy’s astonishing renaissance. But it could also expose weaknesses across the region — and perhaps even provoke a new bout of economic discord. That is the difficulty the central bank faces. No one knows for sure what unpleasant surprises may lurk when it begins the process of so-called tapering — taking away the easy money that made it possible for banks to lend and governments to borrow even after investors had largely deserted them during the worst of the downturn. As a first step, the central bank’s Governing Council has signaled it will provide a timetable on Thursday for its rolling back of purchases of government and corporate debt, a form of virtual money-printing known as quantitative easing. Since early 2015, the bank has used newly created money to buy bonds and other assets worth more than 2 trillion euros, or about $2.35 trillion — a sum roughly equal to the annual economic output of India. As that tide of cash recedes, the hazards that lurked below the surface will come into view. The list is long. For one, Italian banks are still laden with bad loans. Italy’s public debt is so high that the country spends 4 percent of its gross domestic ... Link to the full article to read more