European Central Bank delivers fourth straight rate cut

The European Central Bank cut interest rates for the fourth time this year on Thursday and kept the door open to more easing as the euro zone economy is dragged down by political instability at home and the threat of a fresh US trade war. The ECB has been easing policy quickly for months as inflation worries have largely evaporated. The debate is now shifting to whether it is cutting rates fast enough to support an economy that is falling behind global peers and has been skirting recession for over a year. Worried over this increasingly dark outlook, and what ECB President Christine Lagarde described as “uncertainty … in abundance”, a handful of policymakers even pushed for a bigger half-percentage-point rate cut to buffer the euro zone economy.