Tag Archives: ECB bond purchases

Macroview ECB keeps holding pattern, but we expect an extension of bond purchases in December Nothing in today’s ECB press conference challenged our view that quantitative easing (QE) will be extended at the bank’s next policy meeting on 8 December. We continue to expect the bank to use this meeting to announce a six-month extension of its QE programme beyond March 2017, with monthly asset purchases maintained at their current pace of EUR80 bn monthly, resulting in EUR480 bn in extra asset...

Tapering is not an immediate issue for the ECB, which we believe is much more likely to announce an extension of QE and measures to deal with the scarcity of bonds it can purchase. Spokespersons for the ECB have been anxious to beat back a Bloomberg story that the bank was attempting to “build a consensus” around the tapering of its bond purchases, saying the Governing Council (GC) had not even discussed this issue at its last policy meeting in September.The timing of the story is a...