Thursday 10 March 2016

The ECB has done its best, now maybe the governments could do a bit more.


What is today's biggest news? The ECB's new expansionary stimulus.  Today Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank (ECB) has announced his new policy of cutting its benchmark rates as well as providing cheap short-term loans and longer-term liquidity and expanding the QE. How satisfied is the market? Not quite. As we can see from today's market response, the market rally quickly burnt out quickly after the ECB's announcement. Why? Firstly, Draghi said he would not cut the rates further unless some extreme cases happen. This signals the market that the ECB's further stimulus will be very limited. Secondly, the further rate cut increases inflation risks that the market fears that all the inflationary pressure could explode some time in the future at once. Thirdly, the stimulus does not meet everyone's demand. Some economists suggest that it only meets the minimum requirement. My opinion is the ECB has done almost everything can be done, the problem of the European market is a structural problem in some particular countries. Ireland suffered the subprime crisis but now has the fastest growth in Europe, this shows that the ECB's policy works. The failure in some countries is caused by their structural failure, rather than lack of stimulus from the ECB. Therefore, I do not think there will be another cut in rates in the near future, especially big cuts; I believe the real solution of the European economy is upon those governments and it is necessary for them to restructure their economies when the global economy is far from optimistic.

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