The farmer would till his fields and raise his livestock five days a week, and on the sixth day he would load his produce on some form of transportation and take it to the nearest market town, where he would trade it with artisans, fishermen and other farmers who had products that he needed and that his household did not produce.
At the meeting in January, ECB President Mario Draghi hinted at even more monetary stimulus. Why do we need even more? He said that the ECB will review and possibly reconsider its monetary policy stance. The economic recovery is still vulnerable; it is cyclical and not genuinely structural. New risks have arisen, such as the growth slowdown in emerging countries.