By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – The European Central Bank remains profoundly unsure about where inflation in the euro area is headed, and while Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel’s speech on Thursday offered an interesting recital of many reasons why, it served to highlight that uncertainty more than to shed any new light.
7 October 2021
Following is the full transcript of the interview conducted by Econostream on October 1 with Edward Scicluna, Governor of the Central Bank of Malta and member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank:
6 October 2021
- Avoided tapering because don’t want to commit yet to end PEPP; ‘we’ll do that in December’
- Would view desire to include Greek debt in APP with sympathy, but must examine implications
- ‘All ears and eyes to see whether economic actors are going to contribute to inflation or not’
- ‘Certain countries would mount legal opposition to a flexible APP’
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Yannis Stournaras on Monday conceded the strength of the recovery in the euro area and in particular in his native Greece, all while vehemently urging monetary authorities to discount presently elevated inflation and maintain the current degree of accommodation.
4 October 2021
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde’s unremarkable contribution on Wednesday to the policy panel of the ECB Forum on Central Banking was probably reflective of the inescapable fact that there remain months to go until the ECB’s next date with destiny, so that for now it is simply waiting and hoping for a bit of clarity to emerge from the fog.
29 September 2021
- Formal commitment by ECB to respect capital key could make markets uneasy
- Possible compromise a declaration of ECB’s determination to ensure policy transmission
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde on Tuesday took a step back from her recently relatively hawkish language on inflation as she delivered a carefully scripted speech devoid of new policy conclusions to open the ECB Forum on Central Banking.
28 September 2021
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – Of the possible takeaways from European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde’s European Parliament Q&A on Monday, a prominent candidate might be that the Eurotower doesn’t put too much stock in its latest inflation projections.
27 September 2021
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – Wide-ranging as it was, the interview by CNBC with European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde published Friday yielded less news than might be expected, not because Lagarde was not asked important questions, but rather because she appeared determined to stick to safe ground and avoid further fueling public debate.
24 September 2021
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Madis Müller on Wednesday became the latest monetary policymaker to paint a picture of the euro area economy that would be consistent with a withdrawal of support, a conclusion he was not hesitant to reach.
22 September 2021
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Vice President Luis de Guindos on Tuesday ratcheted up the hawkishness, sounding almost but not quite alarmed about the potential for price pressures to remain elevated and declaring economic risks that had loomed large earlier in the crisis to be essentially null and void.
21 September 2021
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Yannis Stournaras on Monday provided a glimpse into the nature of the tussle awaiting the euro area’s monetary authorities, lining up with numerous colleagues who’ve already conceded brighter inflation prospects, yet remaining as unwilling as ever to take the logical next step towards reduced accommodation.
21 September 2021
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – Officials of the European Central Bank have been all but lining up in recent days to sound the alarm with respect to the potential for euro area inflation to come back to life sooner and more vigorously than expected.
20 September 2021
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – A close look at the interview published Sunday with European Central Bank Governing Council member Pablo Hernández de Cos reveals him to be slowly taking on board at least some of the optimism finally infecting the less hawkish side of the Council. By no means has he undergone a full-bore conversion.
20 September 2021
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – The European Central Bank has essentially stumbled headlong into a pitfall of its own making after information regarding the institution’s expectations of future inflation was apparently shared by Chief Economist Philip Lane with private bankers.
17 September 2021
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – With European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde having made clear last Thursday that the Governing Council would defer major decisions until December, the question of which members are formally entitled to vote at that meeting may be of particular interest.
15 September 2021
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel on Monday combined strong rhetoric from both sides of the hawk-dove spectrum of the ECB’s Governing Council as she once again, though in more forceful terms, put on notice those anticipating persistently weak inflation.
13 September 2021
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – As suggested in this space some weeks ago, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde on Thursday deferred to December major pending decisions of the ECB Governing Council.
9 September 2021
- Public and private comments reveal range of hard-to-reconcile views
- Official to Econostream: shifting PEPP flexibility to APP ‘wouldn’t be easy, for sure’