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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·拉加德接任歐洲央行（ECB）行長，致力于調停。
The bank's negative interest rates and bond-buying were reviled in the euro area's northern countries.
該銀行的負利率和債券購買計劃遭到了歐元區北部國家的痛罵。
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.
為了彌合分歧，拉加德對ECB的戰略進行了為期一年的評估。幾乎沒有投資者預計到2020年政策會有太大變化。
Covid-19 upended all that. On March 18th the ECB announced an emergency asset-purchase scheme
Covid-19顛覆了這一切。3月18日，ECB宣布了一項緊急資產購買計劃，
that would buy 750bn euros ($809bn) in government and corporate bonds.
將購買7500億歐元（合8090億美元）的政府和企業債券。
With its existing programmes, the bank will hoover up over 1trn euros in assets this year—equivalent to 9% of euro-area GDP.
根據現有的計劃，該銀行今年將吸納超過1萬億歐元的資產——相當于歐元區GDP的9%。
But even this might not be enough to gin up the economy.
但即便這可能也不足以刺激經濟。
The severity of the pandemic means that the ECB has been bolder and considerably more flexible than economists
丹麥銀行的皮耶特·克里斯蒂安森表示，全球流行病的嚴重性意味著ECB
would have thought possible a few months ago, says Piet Christiansen of Danske Bank.
比幾個月前經濟學家所認為的可能程度要大膽得多，也要靈活得多。
In large part that is because the ECB is amending some of the rules that have until now governed its asset purchases.
這在很大程度上是因為，ECB正在修改迄今為止一直支配其資產購買的一些規則。
One self-imposed rule concerns the composition of purchases.
一個自我強加的規則涉及到購買的組成。
The ECB generally tries to buy government bonds in proportion to the capital each member state puts into it (or its "capital key"),
ECB一般會根據每個成員國投入的資本（或其“資本額比重”）的比例購買政府債券，
which is roughly in line with the size of its economy. This time the bank will be more flexible.
這與它的經濟規模大致相符。這一次，央行將更加靈活。
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，央行會從意大利和西班牙購買更多債券，盡管這些加起來約占資本額比重的四分之一。
As the virus spread across the south of the euro zone,
隨著病毒在歐元區南部蔓延，
investors had begun to demand a higher premium for holding southern states' bonds—
投資者已經開始要求持有南部各州債券的更高溢價——
and Ms Lagarde did not help when she remarked that she did not consider it the ECB's job to close yield spreads.
拉加德也沒有幫上忙，她表示她不認為ECB的職責是消除收益率差。
The announcement of the emergency bond purchases helped to calm those nerves.
緊急債券購買計劃的宣布有助于緩解這些緊張情緒。
More controversially, the ECB says its emergency purchases will not be bound by its self-imposed "issuer limit",
更有爭議的是，ECB稱其緊急購買將不受自身強加的“發行者限制”的約束，
which had meant that it could not hold more than a third of a member's sovereign debt.
這意味著ECB不能持有一個成員國超過三分之一的主權債務。
Its holdings of German and Dutch bonds have been fast approaching the cap.
它持有的德國和荷蘭債券已經迅速接近上限。
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