Daily Archives: December 6, 2012

Claire Jones Live blog: ECB press conference

December 6, 2012 1:15 pm by Claire Jones
Mario Draghi, ECB president. Image by Getty.

Mario Draghi, ECB president. Image by Getty.

Hello and welcome to today’s live blog on the European Central Bank’s press conference, which follows today’s governing council vote.

ECB president Mario Draghi will meet the press at half 1.

All times are UK time.

 

14.30 And that’s it for the final ECB presser of 2012.

The most important developments were the suggestions that a rate cut had been discussed (and that some members of the governing council had supported it at the December vote) and the “growth” downgrades.

14.26 The ECB president says its “pointless” talking about eurobonds now. Why so? Because it would be pointless to talk about mutualising risk before you have put in place rules that limit fiscal discretion. Eurozone members have to rebuild trust first. “It will become realistic when trust is re-established,” he says. Read more

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Posted in European Central Bank |

Chris Giles Those Osborne fiddles (almost certainly not) in full

December 6, 2012 12:26 pm by Chris Giles

George Osborne chose to ditch straight-talking about the public finances in the Autumn Statement on Wednesday and replace it with fiddling with numbers. I think all of the figures he used in his statement were true — there were no lies — but to coin the motto of accountants, many figures were not fair.

True without always being fair used to be the watchword of Gordon Brown as chancellor, so Ed Balls, shadow chancellor, has little to complain about. Those of us who did complain about Mr Brown’s use of comparisons therefore have a responsibility to be fair and moan about Mr Osborne too. Here are five elements of his speech yesterday which annoyed me because they failed the true and fair test. Read more

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Posted in Uncategorized |