- Monday, 09 July 2018
- News
Brexit could hurt euro zone economies: ECB's Nowotny
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Brexit minister David Davis departed over Prime Minister Theresa May’s plans to leave the European Union, leaving the British leader’s Brexit plans in ruins. The ECB Bank is following the fallout from Britain’s efforts to negotiate its departure, Nowotny said, highlighting it as one of the three main threats to economic growth in the 19 countries which use the single European currency. Read more...
- Monday, 25 June 2018
- News
Low risk ECB extends QE into next year, say economists
The European Central Bank will end its asset purchases by year-end as scheduled, according to a Reuters poll of economists who said the risk bond-buying will continue into next year was low, even with growth likely to slow and inflation stay tame. After outpacing major peers over the past two years, the euro zone economy has lost some momentum from last year’s decade high and the latest poll of over 90 economists taken June 19-22 showed a slight cut to growth forecasts for this year. Nevertheless, all 58 economists who answered an additional question said the risk the ECB will have to extend its quantitative easing program (QE) into next year was “low”, including over 60 percent who said “very low”.
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- Monday, 26 March 2018
- News
The ECB’s Weidmann says Expectations for mid-2019 rate hike is not realistic
The Bundesbank President repeated that the ECB’s policy normalization should start soon, adding again that expectations for a rate hike around the middle of next year are “not unrealistic”. No real surprise there, although there seems a slight delay in the road map towards a rate hike, after Praet recently seemed to hint that he is comfortable with market expectations for a move “next spring”. If mega-hawk Weidmann is aiming more for the middle of next year, there doesn’t seem to be too much of a hurry, even if the general road map for the phasing out of policy measures remains intact, despite trade war jitters and market turbulences.
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- Thursday, 08 March 2018
- News
ECB gives up on bigger bond buys en route to stimulus exit
The European Central Bank dropped a long-standing pledge on Thursday to increase its bond buying if needed, taking another small step in weaning the euro zone economy off its protracted stimulus. Keeping its broader policy unchanged, the ECB said it could still extend its 2.55 trillion euro ($3.16 trillion) bond purchase scheme beyond September if needed. But it skipped a reference to bigger purchases, a signal that it remains on track to end a three-year-old stimulus scheme before the end of 2018.
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