Everybody agreed that what the European Central Bank decided last week (to lower its basic interest rate to 0.05% and purchase asset backed securities and covered bonds) came as a surprise. As a result, stock and bond markets throughout Europe celebrated this additional almost zero cost liquidity, which Mario Draghi, ECB’s President, is ready to […]ECB: Reaching the limits of its mandate to revive the Eurozone economy
September 8, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Everybody agreed that what the European Central Bank decided last week (to lower its basic interest rate to 0.05% and purchase asset backed securities and covered bonds) came as a surprise. As a result, stock and bond markets throughout Europe celebrated this additional almost zero cost liquidity, which Mario Draghi, ECB’s President, is ready to […]ECB’s unconventional monetary measures give first tangible results
August 13, 2014 by Leave a Comment
A strong statement was delivered last week by Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank. He ascertained that the monetary measures already taken unanimously by the central bank’s Governing Council, “will enhance our accommodative monetary policy stance”. Those measures have led to an easing of the euro/dollar parity favouring a cheaper single money, a […]ECB again to subsidize euro area banks with more than one trillion euro
July 10, 2014 by Leave a Comment
The Governing Council of European Central Bank decided last week to hand out to Eurozone banks additional liquidity of up to €1 trillion at almost zero cost, under its new targeted longer-term refinancing operations (TLTROs). At the same time it also decided to “intensify preparatory work related to outright purchases in the Asset Backed Securities […]ECB bets billions on Eurozone’s economic recovery
June 9, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Last Wednesday, one day ahead of the regular monthly meeting of European Central Bank’s Governing Council, Eurostat, the EU statistical service, published a Press release on Eurozone’s near zero economic growth. The relevant passage of that text went like this, “Seasonally adjusted GDP rose by 0.2% in the euro area (EA18) and by 0.3% in […]
