One of the final passengers to board an Alitalia flight from Frankfurt to Rome last Thursday evening had a heavy day behind him.

Taking a window seat, he removed his jacket, unflipped an Ipad and began a game of chess -- something he’d been doing in one form or another for most of the past year. Mario Draghi, hours after pushing through the biggest decision in Europe’s monetary history with a trillion-euro pledge to fight economic decline, was flying home in economy class.

The journey for the 67-year-old president of the European Central Bank took him across a 19-nation currency bloc that has been sliding toward deflation. Yet in the nine months since he warned such a scenario could only be fought off with quantitative easing, he’s needed all his guile and experience to make it happen.

“Like it or not, he’s the savior of last resort in Europe,” said Gene Sperling, who directed the U.S. National Economic Councils in both the Clinton and Obama administrations. “His whatever-it-takes approach has been very important for confidence in an otherwise disconcerting economic environment.”

The route to QE arguably started on a spring day in Amsterdam last April at an event to mark the 200th anniversary of the Dutch central bank. The audience at the Hermitage Museum included two central-bank chiefs who would later take opposing sides in the QE debate -- Klaas Knot of the Netherlands and Luc Coene ofBelgium.

Draghi delivered a candid description of how the ECB would respond to three “contingencies.” One was a “worsening of the medium-term outlook for inflation” caused by weaker demand or a “positive supply shock,” and he said the response would be clear: broad-based asset purchases.

So it turned out. Gross domestic product came almost to a standstill in the second quarter of 2014, and a glut of oil prompted the start of a precipitous plunge in prices in June.

How the ECB president embarked on a campaign to persuade the Governing Council the time for QE had arrived was told to Bloomberg reporters in recent months by multiple people familiar with the discussions who asked not to be identified.

On Aug. 22, Draghi unexpectedly raised the pressure for QE at an annual gathering of global policy makers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He didn’t stay long -- conferring with Federal Reserve Vice Chair Stanley Fischer, his former tutor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, speaking and then leaving -- but the impact was lasting.

David Fuller's view

After an important event such as Mario Draghi’s €60bn per month QE programme until at least the end of September 2016, announced late last week, there is a tendency to think that this was always likely to happen.  The article above gives us a few insights into how difficult it was too get this programme past Germany. 

QE certainly does not solve the EU’s economic problems, but it does buy additional time.  It also favours European stock markets.  Venerable George Soros mentions about 60 percent of the way through this interview that QE can lead to asset bubbles.  Yes, but if you know that process is likely to take place, it creates an excellent, lengthy medium-term opportunity for investors who can participate in the knowledge that they should commence taking profits well before the bubble shows signs of bursting.