With Yellen hell-bent on tightening into Trump's fiscal stimulus, and inflationary impulses popping up all around the world, ECB president Mario Draghi better note some serious downside looming (after leaving rates/taper unchanged) that opens the door to his un-tapering or the stagflationary pressures building everywhere willcome back to bite his precious asset prices.
As we noted earlier, with the market not expecting any changes from the ECB this morning, so far that is precisely what it got, when moments ago the ECB announced that it kept all of its rates unchanged as expected, keeping the rate on the main refinancing operations and the interest rates on the marginal lending facility and the deposit facility at 0.00%, 0.25% and -0.40%, respectively.
In additional language relating to non-standard measures, the ECB also said that "it will continue to make purchases under the asset purchase programme (APP) at the current monthly pace of €80 billion until the end of March 2017 and that, from April 2017, the net asset purchases are intended to continue at a monthly pace of €60 billion until the end of December 2017, or beyond, if necessary" and "in any case until the Governing Council sees a sustained adjustment in the path of inflation consistent with its inflation aim."
It also said that "the net purchases will be made alongside reinvestments of the principal payments from maturing securities purchased under the APP" and cautioned that "if the outlook becomes less favourable, or if financial conditions become inconsistent with further progress towards a sustained adjustment in the path of inflation, the Governing Council stands ready to increase the programme in terms of size and/or duration."
In other words, it may move QE up or down, depending on what happens with inflation, in line with the ECB's December announcement.
ECB Press Conference live feed (begins at 0830ET)
via http://ift.tt/2k4jPVn Tyler Durden