Thursday, March 10, 2016

ECB Panics! Announces Deeper Negative Rates and Expands QE!

ECB's Super Mario lived up to the stock market's expectations. 

In the aftermath of the recent meltdown, Super Mario promised to bailout the stock markets with even more stimulus. Tonight Super Mario delivered

Mario Draghi unleashed his most audacious stimulus package yet, unexpectedly testing the lower bounds of all the European Central Bank’s interest rates and expanding its monthly bond purchases by a third...

The 25-member Governing Council, meeting in Frankfurt on Thursday, cut the rate on cash parked overnight by banks by 10 basis points to minus 0.4 percent and lowered its benchmark rate to zero. Bond purchases were increased to 80 billion euros ($87 billion) a month from 60 billion euros, and corporate bonds will now be eligible. A new series of long-term loans to banks will begin in June.

The package exceeded market expectations for more stimulus and may signal increasing concern about persistent weakness in consumer prices and a Chinese slowdown. Draghi -- who will present new economic forecasts -- has repeatedly said policy makers are willing to do what’s necessary to revive inflation and underpin the region’s upturn.
Remember, the ECB continues to throw 'everything but the kitchen sink'...yet the sustained failure to accomplish the desired goals.  And this is why the next phase of the bailout.

So central banks virtually does the same thing over and over again and yet expect different results. For some such acts are called insanity. But for policymakers it is called as standard.

Now the question is, how long will the honeymoon period last?

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