Draghi: echoes of Trichet at today’s presser
Those hoping that today’s ECB cut would signal a softening of the central bank’s stance in other areas, notably its purchases of government debt, will have been disappointed by Mario Draghi’s comments at his first press conference.
Mario Draghi with Jean-Claude Trichet. Image by Getty.
Jean-Claude Trichet may have now decamped to Paris, or possibly St. Malo, but listening to Mr Draghi today, it was as though he had never left. Read more
ECB cuts
The ECB cuts rates! The main refinancing rate is lowered to 1.25 per cent. Mario Draghi is set to tell us why 45 minutes from now.
Its deposit and lending rates have also been cut by the same margin – 25 basis points. Read more
Mario Draghi could hardly have imagined a more urgent backdrop to his public debut today as European Central Bank president.
The escalating crisis triggered by Greece is increasing pressure for a swift cut in official borrowing costs and an expansion of the ECB’s government bond-buying programme.
A bill making its way through Brazil’s Senate confirms what many economists have suspected for a while. Politicians in Brasília are preparing to widen the central bank’s mandate to focus not just on inflation but also on economic growth and employment creation.
At issue is the credibility of one of the central pillars of Brazil’s economic prosperity for more than a decade – the inflation-targeting regime. The bill, which was approved by the powerful economic commission of the senate this week and now must go to the full Senate and the lower house, is sponsored by Senator Lindbergh Farias of the governing Workers’ Party.
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Chris Giles has been the economics editor of the Financial Times since 2004. Based in London, he writes about international economic trends and the British economy. Before reporting economics for the Financial Times, he wrote editorials for the paper, reported for the BBC, worked as a regulator of the broadcasting industry and undertook research for the Institute for Fiscal Studies. RSS
Michael Steen, Frankfurt bureau chief, covers the ECB and the eurozone's economies. He joined the Financial Times in 2007 as Amsterdam correspondent and later worked as a front page news editor in London. Before joining the FT, he spent nine years as a correspondent at Reuters, mostly in foreign postings that included a previous stint in Frankfurt, as well as Moscow, Kiev and central Asia. He read German and Russian at Cambridge.RSS
Robin Harding is the FT's US economics editor, based in Washington. Prior to this, he was based in Tokyo, covering the Bank of Japan and Japan's technology sector, and in London as an economics leader writer. Robin studied economics at Cambridge and has a masters in economics from Hitotsubashi University, where he was a Monbusho scholar. Before joining the FT, Robin worked in asset management and banking. RSS
Ralph Atkins, capital markets editor, has been writing for the Financial Times for more than 20 years following an economics degree from Cambridge. From 2004 to 2012, Ralph was Frankfurt bureau chief, watching the European Central Bank and eurozone economies. He has also worked in Bonn, Berlin, Jerusalem and Brussels. RSS
Claire Jones is Money Supply economics team writer, based in London. Before joining the Financial Times, she was the editor of the Central Banking journal and CentralBanking.com. Claire studied philosophy and economics at the London School of Economics. RSS
