THE European Central Bank last week slowed down its government bond-buying program, spending 6.65 billion euros (US$9.64 billion) on debt by countries such as Italy and Spain to protect them from financial market turmoil.

The purchases announced by the bank yesterday compared with 14.3 billion euros reported a week earlier and 22 billion euros the week before. The emergency program to buy bonds of financially weak countries drives down the interest rates that those nations would face on new borrowing, in a bid to prevent high rates from wrecking their government finances and making it impossible for them to repay their debts.

Rising bond-market interest rates have already pushed Greece, Ireland and Portugal into needing rescue loans. Eurozone officials are trying to keep such troubles from spreading to Italy and Spain, which are considered too large to bail out