ECB and BoE will not take any false steps
Focus in Europe today will be on the ECB and the Bank of England’s meetings. Neither Draghi nor Carney will change the course of their monetary policy.
Bank of England
UK: All Change at the Bank of England?
UBS | The announcement of the policy decision at midday on Thursday will also include the minutes to the meeting, alongside the publication and press conference for the August Inflation Report. This will make for more transparency, but will mean a lot of information for the market to digest in one go.
Central bankers waiting to see who will jump first
The Corner | February 28, 2015 | The fall in oil prices may yet push the Bank of England to raise rates, which it has been keeping at 0.5% since March 2009. It currently owns the equivalent of 25% of UK’s nominal GDP (see graph above).
The BoE might be the first big Western Central Bank to raise its interest rates
MADRID | By J. J. Figares (LINK) | On Wednesday, the minutes of the last meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England (BoE) were published. Although 9 of its members voted to retain unchanged its program of asset purchases in secondary markets, 2 of them, Ian McCafferty and Martin Weal, they voted against the proposal to keep interest rates reference at the current level of 0.5% and advocated to increase them by a quarter percentage point.
ECB press conference: Draghi to analyze markets and political instability
Berlin | By Alberto Lozano | Mario Draghi is speaking today again. Although no decisions or changes in the ECB’s monetary policy are expected, markets expect to know the ECB president’s assessment of the latest economic and financial developments.
UK inflation sharp jump fuels expectations of rates hike
MADRID | The Corner | UK Consumer Prices Index (CPI) grew by 1.9% in the year to June 2014, up from 1.5% in May, according to official data released on Tuesday, almost reaching the Bank of England’s 2% target and strenghtening the case for a rise in interest rates which have been held at a record low of 0.5%.
Has UK’s housing bubble slowed down?
MADRID | By Bankinter analysts | According to Rightmove, housing prices in the UK rose by +0.1% m/m in June versus previous +3.6%. Thus, the year-on-year rate slows down to 7.7% from 8.9%. In such context, Bank of England’s minutes will be particularly relevant this week, especially after Mr Carney said that the rise in interest rates will come sooner than markets expect.
The Ying and Yang of Economic Policy
By David Denton | The Richter Scale | The UK QE has merely allowed the banks to off load UK government debt and replace this with other government debt, helping to keep bond prices high but having no impact on the real economy, other than to keep interest rates artificially low.
British banks to take part in the European money fair
By Tania Suárez, in Madrid | Next Wednesday takes place the second Long-Term Refinancing Operation (LTRO) by the European Central Bank. The hot spot is the participation of some British banks, such as Lloyds and RBS (according to FT), which didn’t take part in the last liquidity auction thanks to the central bank of the United Kingdom. The end of its QE programme has forced RBS and Lloyd to forecast…