Publications

Both Mario Draghi in Europe and Donald Trump in the United States support the increase in tariffs on Chinese imports, but with objectives that seem to reflect different historical conceptions of the wealth of nations.

In a relatively relaxed press conference- Draghi’s last one as ECB President- , he provided a dovish tone, in line with his entire presidency. He did not give any hints about action to be taken in the short term, trying not to tie the hands of his successor, Mrs Lagarde. We expect the ECB to remain on hold.

Central banking forums are particularly interesting, providing as they do an environment where one can take a step back from the volatile present and, even more importantly, take perspective and ask oneself where it is that we are heading.

The ECB strengthened its forward guidance on rates, with no rate hikes at least through the first half of 2020 in response to the increase and persistence of global uncertainty. The ECB opens the possibility to further easing if needed.

The ECB strengthened its forward guidance on rates, with no rate hikes at least through the end of 2019. They also launched a new series of TLTROs. The central bank made a significant downward growth revision in 2019, but minor changes in the medium term. Despite the revision, risks remain tilted to the downside.

The ECB is assessing the extent of the slowdown before discussing monetary policy measures. The balance of risks has moved to the downside. No modification in the policy or forward guidance, but the door is open for changes in the coming months.

The ECB has set out along the path towards ending QE, since monthly asset purchases will be halved from September, but it has made no changes to its future guidance on interest rates. In the next few months attention will be focused on how the reinvestment policy will be implemented and when and at what pace interest rates will start to rise.

As widely expected, at today’s monetary policy meeting there were no changes in the ECB’s monetary policy stance, as the central bank left key interest rates unchanged and reiterated that it expects the key ECB interest rates to remain “at their present levels at least through the summer of 2019".