From Reuters:
LONDON, May 3 (Reuters) 13.04 – The euro pared gains while German Bund futures edged up on Friday after European Central Bank policymaker Ewald Nowotny said the central bank was open-minded about taking deposit rates into negative territory.
Nowotny said he was “astonished” by the market’s reaction to his comments earlier in the day, when he said negative deposit rates were not relevant in the near term.
Mario’s presentation to EU leaders from Thursday night. Msg: ‘Mind the gap’…
Like Top Trumps, just not as much fun…
“Oh, Hollande…” said Mario Draghi as the rest of us wondered if he had or hadn’t entered the supposed currency wars. Or if, in fact, the question was redundant.
The euro’s dive on Thursday was impressive and clearly the result of ECB president Draghi’s comments after the ECB’s rate setting meeting. But whether it was justified or not is very much contested. Read more
Draghi follows Mark Carney onto the stage… Read more
Negative rates, as we’ve discussed before, are a funny thing.
On the one hand they can send an immensely powerful message. On the other hand they have the power to seriously and dangerously disrupt core economic mechanisms by magnifying the physical hoarding incentive — this helps to create a negative feedback loop that ultimately crowds out capital and leads to voluntary capital destruction. Read more
Obvious dovishness + Draghi’s admittance that the ECB is operationally ready for negative deposit rates = that. Read more
On Thursday, ECB president Mario Draghi was in Milan to give a speech at Università Bocconi. It’s a charming read, as the policymaker reviews the eurozone crisis in pleasantly digestible terms even by Friday morning standards.
Once the crisis was underway, and sovereign spreads had widened out, a debate started: Read more
At Thursday’s ECB press conference, Mario Draghi unveiled plans to introduce a new series of euro bank notes. And there was a little video to accompany the news… Read more
Let’s go back to May 2005, to a lecture delivered by Bank of England governor Mervyn King at the Cass Business School… Read more
That call might not come this side of New Year.
The market has been waiting for Spain to request its very own Enhanced Conditions Credit Line for quite a while now. It’s the road to OMT. And for a (very) little while just last week while it appeared we were only a weekend away.
But it’s now looking increasingly like we are not gonna get to see any OMT buying at all in 2012. Sad. Read more
The markets are reminding the Spanish Prime Minister that he needs to actually request economic assistance — and accept all that that entails — before the ECB will physically buy Spanish paper.
Here’s the 10 year Spanish note on Monday, just as it travelled back up through 6 per cent… Read more
Draghi delivered, US private jobs data beat expectations and the rally monkey has thus been coaxed out of his cage:
Draghi-day is getting a big lead-up. Markets just jerked (and then came back a fair bit) on the back of another tid bit. From Bloomberg (with our emphasis):
European Central Bank President Mario Draghi’s bond-buying proposal involves unlimited purchases of government debt that will be sterilized to assuage concerns about printing money, two central bank officials briefed on the plan said. Read more
…looks like this:
… he still has a few things to say.
From the ECB’s perspective, a strong economic union is an essential complement to the single monetary policy. Building this will require a structured process with correct sequencing. Yet citizens can be certain that three elements will remain constant. The ECB will do what is necessary to ensure price stability. It will remain independent. And it will always act within the limits of its mandate. Read more
And so to the Frankfurter Rundschau…
Here’s the interview with German ECB director Jörg Asmussen which was helping to compress Spanish and Italian sovereign yields further on Tuesday. His words are being hailed by some (such as the Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, as a “crucial turning point” in the eurozone crisis. Read more
Maybe it’s because it’s August. Or maybe people got round to reading J Cotterill on the matter. Either way, stocks are up, sharply, and peripheral sovereign yields are down, pretty much across Europe.
Convertibility, seniority… “modalities”.
Was it a disaster or not? Anyway here’s the goods: Read more
Given last week’s declaration that Draghi would do “whatever it takes” to restore the transmission mechanism and Europe with it… what could possibly have led to Thursday’s disappointing ECB action?
Was it that… Read more
In other words, ‘We’ll see you after the holidays.’ Which in chart form looked like this on Thursday…
No change from the ECB after its August meeting. Click the pic to watch the ECB presser at 13.30, London time. And/or go here for the live FT.com blog hosted by Ralph Atkins.
This’ll surely liven up next Thursday’s ECB meeting…
Via Bloomberg late on Friday (which was citing two central bank officials): Read more
“Such a speculation [on whether Greece will default] would be a sure-fire way of losing money given the decisions taken last Thursday.”
- Jean-Claude Trichet, in an interview Le Point on 22 July 2011 (published 27 July). Read more
Summer time! When:
+ 
+ 
= Read more
Recent comments from Mario Draghi and Ewald Nowotny have got the markets all aflutter and struggling to understand how policymakers are going to keep the eurozone together in the next weeks and months.
JPM’s David Mackie has complied a list of possible actions, in descending order of likelihood as he sees it: Read more
Some interesting comments via Reuters from Draghi on Thursday (H/T Marc Ostwald at Monument Securities):
11:13 RTRS-ECB’S DRAGHI SAYS IF PREMIA ON GOVT BORROWING HURT MONETARY POLICY TRANSMISION, THEY COME WITHIN OUR MANDATE Read more
(That’s Lisa, at Thursday’s European Central Bank press conference) Read more
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