Why is the ECB still fiddling over a potential eurozone crisis?

‘The lesson from the last eurozone crisis was that going early and communicating clearly is the best way to prevent a riot … Largarde [pictured], by contrast, has started slowly and vaguely.’ Photograph: John Thys/AFP/Getty Images

Perhaps the European Central Bank was feeling left out as the financial world turned its attention to the US Federal Reserve’s interest rate hike. But emergency meetings of major central banks are supposed to produce more substance than the weak offering that emerged from Frankfurt after a morning of contemplation: a plan to accelerate work on a “new anti-fragmentation instrument”.

The fragmentation in question is the widening of bond yields between eurozone countries. In short, as interest rate rises have come into view, weaker economies are having to pay meaningfully greater rates to borrow than the likes of Germany – about 2.4 percentage points more in the case of Italy.