In the aftermath of Yellen’s “hung hold” decision, which left the world confused if the economy is getting better or worse, global equity markets proceeded to take both Europe and Japan to task, trying to push one of the last two remaining central banks to boost their QE. And until this morning it was unclear who was going to take the lead. Then, following comments over the past several hours from ECB governing council members Ewald Nowotny and Bostjan Jazbec, as well as a well-directed leak via Market News, we got confirmation that anyone hoping for Mario Draghi to blink first may be disappointed this time around.

First it was Nowotny who said that he is wary of increasing central-bank stimulus any time soon even as policy makers struggle to boost inflation. The question of whether more easing is needed “deserves a much more thorough examination,” he said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Vienna on Wednesday. “Monetary policy should be a steady-hand policy. We shouldn’t act in a too-active way.”

On the option of new asset classes, “I personally wouldn’t look at them but there’s a discussion about what those classes would be,” Nowotny said. “A prolongation of the program has certain signaling effects, not a very direct effect.”

ECB policy makers have expressed concern about the impact of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s decision this month to wait before making its first interest-rate increase since the financial crisis. Benoit Coeure, the ECB’s markets chief, noted that there had been “a significant appreciation” of the euro against the currencies of the bloc’s major trading partners. He said the Fed nevertheless confirmed the ECB’s diagnosis “of the existence of risks in the global economy.”

As Bloomberg adds, the Frankfurt-based ECB has already committed to pump more than 1.1 trillion euros ($1.2 trillion) into the 19-nation currency bloc, buying an average of 60 billion euros a month of public and private-sector debt through September next year in a bid to rescue the region from too-low inflation. Fresh challenges range from a slump in commodity prices to a worsening slowdown in emerging markets that could yet force the central bank to do more.