ECB’s Knot hints at beginning of tightening cycle’s second half

With five policy meetings between now and July 2023, the ECB would achieve “quite a decent pace of tightening” through half-percentage point rises in the months ahead before borrowing costs eventually peaked by the summer.

The risk of us doing too little is still the bigger risk.

We are just at the beginning of the second half.

Deciding when it had tightened policy enough would be the ‘main challenge’ for the ECB next year.

It was no coincidence that before starting to raise rates in July the ECB had set up a new bond-buying tool to counter the risk of fresh turmoil.

In 2011, the ECB should ‘probably have paid a little bit more attention’ to low levels of underlying inflation –  excluding more volatile energy and food costs – before raising rates in response to surging oil prices.

ECB had been too late to respond to price pressures and should have stopped asset purchases in late 2021, instead of March 2022.

Since the summer, rate-setters had ‘already made up for it’ with a series of large rate increases.

It surprised governing council members when he supported a step down to a half-point rate rise at its latest meeting – after two larger moves previously.

By shifting to smaller rate moves, ‘We grant ourselves a little bit more time along the way as we tighten into 2023 to evaluate the effects of our tightening’.

Recent data indicated any recession would be ‘short and shallow’.

In certain parts of the region, such as Germany, recent data showed ‘the worst may already be behind us’.