Frankfurt — European Central Bank (ECB) policy makers held key interest rates and mass bond-buying unchanged on Thursday, sending a calming message to financial markets looking for hints the bank’s easy money policy would soon end. ECB policy makers were unanimous in choosing not to change their guidance for monetary policy and not to set a date for discussing changes to its stimulus programme, ECB president Mario Draghi said at a briefing after the decision was announced on Thursday. He also said that inflation, the target of much of the stimulus, was not where the ECB wanted it to be. "We need to be persistent and patient because we aren’t there yet," he told a news conference. "We also were unanimous in communicating no change to the forward guidance and also we were unanimous in setting no precise date for when to discuss changes in the future — in other words, we simply said that our discussions should take place in … the autumn." Just three monetary policy meetings remain befo...
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