The European Central Bank has left its benchmark interest rate unchanged despite worsening growth forecasts for the 17 countries that use the euro. The bank's governing council kept the key refinancing rate at a record low of 1 percent. Market attention will focus on bank President Mario Draghi's growth outlook at a news conference, and whether he will signal the bank could be more open to a possible rate cut down the road. Draghi has called for a “growth compact” among governments but has not given a detailed idea of what he meant. He and other ECB officials have pressed governments to make their countries more business-friendly by cutting regulation and restrictions on hiring and firing, not to add stimulus spending. Austerity and a focus on fiscal discipline has been the main prescription across Europe for dealing with a debt crisis that's afflicted the continent for nearly three years and has raised the specter of the breakup of the single currency. Three countries — Greece, Ireland and Portugal — have already required bailouts because of unsustainable levels of debt. The ECB steadied financial markets with two massive handouts of cheap credit to banks totally just over $1.3 trillion in December and February. The central bank says it is still analyzing the effects of the loans so analysts think another handout is unlikely to happen soon, if at all.
