ECB drops rates as the European economy slows down

The European Central Bank (ECB) announced 2 big things:

1. The cut interest rates to a record low of -0.5%. That's a record low.
2. Beginning in November, the ECB will buy €20bn of bonds a month from banks to inject more money into the economy. It's known as Quantitive Easing (QE)

The Governing Council now expects the key ECB interest rates to remain at their present or lower levels until it has seen the inflation outlook robustly converge to a level sufficiently close to, but below, 2% within its projection horizon, and such convergence has been consistently reflected in underlying inflation dynamics.

– ECB statement

So what is Quantitive Easing (QE)?

According to theeconomist.com "To carry out QE central banks create money by buying securities, such as government bonds, from banks, with electronic cash that did not exist before. The new money swells the size of bank reserves in the economy by the quantity of assets purchased—hence "quantitative" easing'

What does that mean?

A central bank prints money to artificially long term lower interest rates to help the economy when it's struggling.