35th meeting Macroeconomic policy questions

Forum Aviation Policy Ministers Meeting

Ironically, the October meeting of the ECB s Governing Council will take place in Paris this year. French politicians have been the most aggressive in putting political pressure on the ECB to relax its interest rate normalization policy.

Capturing the ECB

(a) A meeting on competition law and policy, as called for in the report of the Expert Meeting on Competition Law and Policy

The ECB Grows Up

European Central Bank (ECB)

According to a knowledgeable ECB source, however, Europe s finance ministers regularly meet in secret with the ECB leadership for a mutual and frank exchange of views on monetary policy and other issues. The dialogue already exists though the public does not know it.

The Bank of Japan and the ECB were, characteristically, the slowest to react, keeping their policy rates higher for longer, and not undertaking QE and other extraordinary liquidity measures until late in the day. Indeed, it required new leaders in both institutions Haruhiko Kuroda at the BOJ and Mario Draghi at the ECB finally to set monetary policy right.

Is the ECB Doing Enough?

The ECB and Its Critics

Ecb Is Now Europe s Anchor

Germany s Case Against the ECB

20. Leaders welcomed the outcomes of the Forum Aviation Policy Ministers Meeting and recognized the value of the sectoral policy meeting format adopted in this case.

Expert Meeting on Competition Law and Policy 24 26 November

Expert Meeting on Competition Law and Policy 24 26 November

But the announcement of this policy change at the February meeting also did not go smoothly. Trichet somehow garbled the Council s message in his press conference, making it sound as if the ECB wanted to shift to an easing bias instead of wait and see neutrality.

More than the usual blame game is at work here. Pressures are mounting on the ECB to raise interest rates and Berlusconi and Co. s attacks are as much as an attempt to forestall future rate hikes as to get the ECB to loosen its monetary policy.

Increasing tensions between the euro countries on economic policy are likely, as are growing rifts within the ECB governing council in the coming years. We might get a sneak preview this year and in 2011, when European leaders must select a new ECB president and vice president.

So long as the ECB does not acknowledge the doubts now hovering around Europe s economies, there is a risk of a crash. The ECB is convinced that benign neglect is the right exchange rate policy, and that the G7 is the right place to address currency volatility.

A Yes vote, on the other hand, would encourage a reassured Chirac to continue his policy of no reform and scapegoating the ECB. External political pressure on the ECB and its president, Jean Claude Trichet, to lower interest rates and talk the euro down surely would increase.

The Expert Meeting on Competition Law and Policy, meeting in Geneva from 13 to 15 November 1996,

Helping the ECB Cross the Rubicon

Why the ECB Should Buy American

The ECB Picks Up The Pace

Trichet Takes Control At The ECB

Who Next at the ECB Helm?

Meeting of Experts on Competition Law and Policy 13 15 November

Meeting of Experts on Competition Law and Policy 24 26 November

The ECB has never claimed that its strategy is the ultimate solution to the challenges monetary policy is confronted with. But, it has recognised the need to include monetary analysis in a very broad sense into its policy considerations.

The necessary transfers are not being made to make the common currency bearable to regions that lose out and are already in recession when the ECB tightens policy. The institutional foundations of stable long run fiscal policy are being eroded.

An informal interactive meeting devoted to a policy dialogue would then follow.

(a) Endorses the recommendations of the Expert Meeting on Competition Law and Policy

The ECB governing council has already agreed, in principle, to use the first of these policy tools. But monetary expansion alone will be inadequate to lift the eurozone out of stagnation.

Ironically, the inflation targeting advocated by Greenspan s nominated successor, Ben Bernanke, lies closer to ECB monetary policy than to the discretionary activism that the Fed has practiced during Greenspan s long tenure.

LONDON Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, has repeatedly claimed that the ECB will do everything necessary to save the euro. Nothing has been formally agreed yet, but the ECB is expected to announce a new government bond buying program following next week s meeting of its Governing Council.

ECB President Mario Draghi has said much the same. Indeed, the upcoming summit is missing an important agenda item a European Fiscal Authority (EFA) that, in partnership with the ECB, could do what the ECB cannot do on its own.

To fund these redemptions on behalf of some member states, the ECB would issue bonds in its own name, guaranteed solely by the ECB, but repaid, in full, by the member state. Upon the issue of such an ECB bond, the ECB would simultaneously open a debit account for the member state on whose behalf it issued the bond.

Will Germany agree to such a relaxation or, for that matter, to Hollande s implicit demand that the ECB follow Japan s example and loosen monetary policy to drive the exchange rate back down?

That is what the ECB is now throwing away.

There would then be an informal interactive meeting devoted to a policy dialogue that would include two panel discussions on policy relevant issues.

They also discussed difficulties encountered in meeting the commitments and policy objectives of the regional strategy, and suggested policy measures to address these difficulties.

23. The Committee on Policy Planning was the Programme s official policy making body, meeting twice a year until it was disbanded in January 1996.

Ecommerce and Development Report 2003, UNCTAD SIDTE ECB 2003 1.

It also means meeting the key policy challenge of fiscal adjustment, accompanied by administrative reform.