This would provide further stimulus to the economy, eventually helping us achieve our price stability mandate, and ex post, decreasing the overall level of risk in the economy. Finally, our intention to expand the central bank balance sheet until end-September 2016 also constitutes an important signal of our expansionary monetary policy stance over an extended horizon.
In this sense, the PSPP also complements our forward guidance on interest rates. Forward guidance has proved very effective in shielding euro area financial conditions from global shocks. Thanks to PSPP, it now extends over a longer horizon. This effect may be further amplified by an increase in investor confidence, which in turn will further reduce heterogeneity across the euro area countries.