ECB’s Villeroy: Victory against inflation is in sight

The European Reserve Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt, Germany, is the reserve bank for the Eurozone. The ECB sets rates of interest and handles financial policy for the area. The ECB main required is to keep cost stability, which implies keeping inflation at around 2%. Its main tool for attaining this is by raising or decreasing rates of interest. Fairly high rates of interest will generally lead to a more powerful Euro and vice versa. The ECB Governing Council makes financial policy choices at conferences held 8 times a year. Choices are made by heads of the Eurozone nationwide banks and 6 long-term members, consisting of the President of the ECB, Christine Lagarde.

In severe scenarios, the European Reserve bank can enact a policy tool called Quantitative Easing. QE is the procedure by which the ECB prints Euros and utilizes them to purchase possessions– generally federal government or business bonds– from banks and other banks. QE generally leads to a weaker Euro. QE is a last hope when merely decreasing rates of interest is not likely to accomplish the goal of cost stability. The ECB utilized it throughout the Great Financial Crisis in 2009-11, in 2015 when inflation stayed stubbornly low, along with throughout the covid pandemic.

Quantitative tightening up (QT) is the reverse of QE. It is carried out after QE when a financial healing is underway and inflation begins increasing. Whilst in QE the European Reserve Bank (ECB) purchases federal government and business bonds from banks to supply them with liquidity, in QT the ECB stops purchasing more bonds, and stops reinvesting the primary growing on the bonds it currently holds. It is generally favorable (or bullish) for the Euro.