FRANKFURT (Reuters) - On December 8 last year, Mario Draghi sat down to chair his second policy meeting as European Central Bank president. Wearing the same understated, dark blue tie he had sported when he led the ECB to a surprise interest rate cut at his first meeting as president a month earlier, Europe's most powerful banker wanted to hear his colleagues' arguments on what action to take this time.
The meeting, held on the 36th floor of the ECB's glass and steel Frankfurt headquarters, opened with recommendations from veteran policymaker and chief economist Juergen Stark, a German, according to two people present. Made in the Bundesbank's inflation-fighting mould, Stark felt the Council should wait to see how price pressures developed before moving again. Inflation was running at 3 percent, well above the ECB's target of just under 2 percent. This was no time to cut.
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