abcde_98

Hawkish Comments From ECB Send Euro Higher

I don't think it is rhetoric, but a couple of the reasons Weber gives are silly
(1) economy expected to pick up next year, so if we reduce now, we will have to raise again (likely) promptly. Well ECB, get off your arses, it's not a vacation/old boys club to meet monthly having expensive dinners/drinks.
(2) we've never taken rates below 2% previously ....well, things change, we are in a unique economic situation, somewhat unprecedented (or at least something not seen for 75 years)
(3) not enough information is available .... decisions need to be made on imperfect, incomplete information ... by the time you wait for the information, things have already become worse... the ECB is very fortunate that the EU is not one country because there would surely be some sort of banding together by the citizens and taking their issues to a single governement
(4) avoiding negative real interest rates. is such situation expected to last for a long time or temporary? and what is so bad with such a situation, for a temprary period?

Likely it's ECB politics, seeing that the USD was more of the currency that investors ran to for a safe haven. Well, ECB, several of your member countries had complained about significantly lower export sales b/c of high Euro, and look at the auto and other industries in your countries. Perhaps the reason is with a weak Euro that their jobs/prestige/life status is diminished and even further perhaps the EU could break up some time down the road.... the economies of the member countries are quite divergent.

Maybe the EU needs to see more and more workers unemployed, or maybe cut the work week to 4 days or 30 hours, then the statistics will say there are fewer unemployed. There's only so long that the socialistic, very high taxation, ageing demographic countries can survive and create GDP growth.

For the EU to survive, it needs to bring in more countries with younger populations, good GDP growth to make up / provide for the older / mature economies.
hmmm, on that point, forget that alleged $50bn scam by Madoff, perhaps the EU is the worlds biggest scam!