How to upset a German central banker?  Accuse him of “pragmatism”. The word has a negative meaning in Europe’s largest economy, as comments on Friday by Jürgen Stark, an European Central Bank executive board member, illustrate.

Reuters reports the former German Bundesbanker as denying Thursday’s quarter percentage point interest rate cut by the ECB marked a strategic shift towards pragmatism by Mario Draghi, the new ECB president. “Yesterday’s decision has nothing to do with pragmatism,” Mr Stark told a Frankfurt conference. Read more