Exclusive: ECB rate setters converge on December deposit rate cut

"Let's go for a big cut," one Governing Council member, who asked not to be named, said. "There is no bottom to the deposit rate in the near term, it could be lowered quite sharply still," he said. "There must be a bottom but it's further out."

... The rate setter said that "zero lower bound", a term meaning the bottom for interest rates, either "no longer exists, or if it does it is well below zero".

The risk in the cut is a squeeze on margins in the banking sector, already under pressure, and it is not clear that banks would boost lending to avoid the punitive rate for parking money with the central bank.