If the European Central Bank wants to ramp up its stimulus this week, it may have to get creative. The ECB has so far been buying EUR60 billion ($63.47 billion) of bonds a month under its quantitative easing program, and analysts expect it to expand the initiative at its meeting on Thursday. But the bank has bound its own hands with a string of limitations and those may need to be rethought. The primary restraint: The ECB doesn't want to lose money on quantitative easing so it will only buy bonds that sport higher yields than what the central bank itself pays to the commercial banks that are its depositors. In the ... (full story)