By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – We return today to European Central Bank Governing Council member François Villeroy de Galhau’s habit of staking out positions with confidence and then recalibrating seamlessly without acknowledging the recalibration—a habit that now looks like teeing up a potential easing pitch before he leaves office.

We first documented the pattern four years ago, tracing how Villeroy blithely migrated from insisting there was “no risk” of a durable inflation return in Europe to embracing the language of a “new inflation regime” around 2%.

The pattern is back in his recent inflation-risk messaging: he has walked his language from near-balance to a clear downside tilt, culminating on Wednesday—at least for the moment—in the assertion that downside risks now outweigh upside risks.

Policymakers should of course update their views. Villeroy, however, communicates as if each updated formulation had been the stable baseline all along. He does not point out that he has moved, and he does not spell out what changed between successive formulations—even when, as in the present case, his evolution is rapid. Each new line is delivered as if it were a restatement, when it is plainly a revision.

On December 12, his public stance regarding the balance of euro area inflation risks was essentially symmetrical with a mild nudge downward: downside risks were “at least as significant” as upside risks.

Eight days on, the threat of too-low inflation suddenly dominated, with risks now “particularly to the downside,” but on January 14 and 20, it was back to the “at least as significant” phrasing of early December.

That then gave way on February 6 to downside inflation risks being “probably more significant” than those to the upside, and on February 10, probability ceded to certainty about direction, accompanied by modesty about degree—downside risks were “a little stronger than the upside risks,” he said.

Finally, in his appearance yesterday before the French National Assembly’s Finance Committee, the modesty was gone: “There may be some upside risks,” he hedged, but “I remain convinced that the downside risks are greater.”

Why he would “remain convinced” was left unexplained. But then, Villeroy doesn't put himself in settings where he is pressed to explain. For all their frequency, his interviews never see him asked how today’s wording fits with what he said a week—or a month—earlier. The exchanges are typically engineered for domestic consumption; staying visible counts far more than reconciling today’s certainty with yesterday’s.

That makes his talkativeness low-cost. The cost is paid by everyone else: the more often he rewrites the balance of risks without saying so, or why, the less his “guidance” is worth.

Meanwhile, he can keep sliding the public narrative from one formulation to the next without ever having to supply the missing connective tissue, because neither the audiences he addresses nor those interviewing him insist on it.

He sells the shifts as pragmatism, but gives a wide berth to the one pragmatic thing that would make them intelligible: making clear what changed.

In the latest episode, either the euro area inflation situation has worsened at a breakneck pace, or only Villeroy’s public framing has. In either case, at the current rate, it would not surprise us if, before leaving office, he graduated to urging what his “recalibrations” are already preparing: additional monetary easing.

In the larger perspective, regrettably little has changed since our similar piece on France’s central bank governor more than four years ago. Recent weeks have put the habit on fast-forward—perhaps precisely because he is leaving in early June.

For observers, his phrasing remains a moving—sometimes meandering—indicator. With his exit approaching, it is an increasingly transient one, and less and less worth taking at face value.