By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – The European Central Bank must have realised when it chose to hike rates on 14 September that a move of such dubious necessity at this stage of the tightening cycle would inevitably give rise to a need for interviews like that of Vice President Luis de Guindos on Monday.
2 October 2023
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Pierre Wunsch has said that high uncertainty made it very unclear whether the ECB’s rate hike last week would be the final one in the current tightening cycle.
20 September 2023
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde on Thursday had it both ways, suggesting by any reasonable interpretation that today’s dovish hike decided by the Governing Council could be the end of the tightening cycle, but at the same time stubbornly beating back the idea that the peak of euro area interest rates had definitively been reached.
14 September 2023
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – In the run-up to the September 2022 monetary policy meeting of the European Central Bank’s Governing Council, we surmised with respect to the outcome that available evidence pointed to a 75bp hike ‘as a bit more probable on the basis of the number of supporters and the feebleness of the pushback.’
13 September 2023
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – We suspect that Irish online news outlet The Currency tried to draw European Central Bank Executive Board member Philip Lane out more explicitly on the matter of what the ECB Governing Council might decide at its monetary policy meeting next week.
5 September 2023
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – Not being the table-pounding sort, European Central Bank Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel prefers to articulate her policy preferences dressed in the more scholarly arguments typified by her speech on Thursday – from which we nonetheless draw the conclusion that she is leaning towards another rate hike next month.
31 August 2023
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – After ascertaining on 01 August that the option of a pause at the 14 September meeting of the European Central Bank Governing Council had taken an early lead versus the lone alternative of yet another hike, we observe today that little has changed about this, which is not surprising, given that it also remains the case that monetary policy is still subject to the summer lull, leaving public pronouncements rare.
25 August 2023
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – It is too easy - and probably wrong - to think that European Central Bank Governing Council member Joachim Nagel could only have been calling for another hike of interest rates in the interview published on Friday.
25 August 2023
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – The option of a pause at the 14 September meeting of the European Central Bank Governing Council has hardly clinched the outcome, but the ECB’s latest consumer expectations survey, released Tuesday, is more wind in the sails of the Council doves.
8 August 2023
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – The option of a pause at the 14 September meeting of the European Central Bank Governing Council appears to enjoy an early lead versus the lone alternative of yet another hike, but with most Council members not having pronounced themselves since last Thursday’s decision, it is too soon to call an outcome that will depend to a large extent on data available only when the time comes.
1 August 2023
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – Econostream has updated our hawk-dove ranking to take into account the passage of the last monetary policy meeting, so that the columns indicating voting status include only future meetings – as of today, 14 September, 26 October and 14 December.
28 July 2023
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – Prone though she may be to missteps, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde got through Thursday’s post-Governing Council meeting press conference without any obvious and serious blunders, and in particular was merely misinterpreted by some to have said that the ECB had no more ground to cover.
28 July 2023
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde on Thursday left the evolution of monetary policy in the coming months entirely up to incoming data, except to make clear that a cut was not one of the options that stood a chance of being considered.
27 July 2023
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – Yet again, the principal outcome of the European Central Bank’s Governing Council meeting this Thursday seems beyond dispute, given the lack of any obviously adequate reason to backtrack from the 25bp rate hike consistently signalled over the last weeks. It thus once more comes down to how the ECB frames its attitude toward policy decisions ahead.
25 July 2023
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – Is the European Central Bank Governing Council’s most prominent hawk going dovish?
11 July 2023
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – The European Central Bank on Thursday delivered as expected by Econostream and many others, with President Christine Lagarde leaving no doubt that monetary tightening was set to continue beyond the latest 25bp hike.
15 June 2023
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – We have no difficulty excluding the possibility of the European Central Bank Governing Council reaching any other monetary policy decision this Thursday than the one it has amply flagged of another 25bp rate hike.
13 June 2023
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel, who had been keeping her policy views relatively under wraps, was bound to air these before the 15 June Governing Council meeting, and did so on Wednesday, just before the start of the quiet period, with comments we see as fitting the general trend toward a more dovish outlook.
7 June 2023
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Klaas Knot on Tuesday again sounded markedly less hawkish than in the recent past, reassuring that the worst of inflation had passed, rejoicing at monetary tightening’s initial impact on the real economy, and arguing that financial stability risks warranted proceeding with further rate hikes cautiously.
6 June 2023