Adam Posen, a member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, on Monday endorsed the European Central Bank’s (ECB) recent foray into secondary markets and roundly dismissed the argument that such actions necessarily undermine a central bank’s credibility.

In remarks at a conference in New York, Posen said that staunchly refusing to intervene in debt markets “for appearance’s sake alone, regardless of the economic circumstances, is a sign of immaturity or insecurity, not