The European Central Bank cut its official interest rates to new record lows and announced two limited programs to buy bonds in the market, in another effort to revive the Eurozone’s stalling economy.
The package of measures comes only three months after the ECB’s last rate cut, and reflects how the Eurozone economy has struggled as the Ukraine crisis has sapped confidence. It failed to grow at all in the second quarter and Draghi cut the ECB’s forecast for growth this year to a mere 0.9%.
The Frankfurt-based bank cut its key refinancing rate by 0.1% percentage point to 0.05%, a new record low in the euro’s 15-year existence. It also cut its deposit rate by the same amount to -0.20%, meaning that banks will have to pay an even bigger penalty for stashing excess cash away at the central bank instead of putting it to work in the economy.
ECB President Mario Draghi said at his regular press conference later that rates couldn’t now go any lower, having reached a “lower bound.”
As expected, the ECB stopped short of buying government bonds en masse as the Federal Reserve and the Japanese and U.K. central banks have done. But from October, it will start buying “simple, high-quality” asset-backed securities, in as-yet undisclosed amounts. It will also start a third program for buying covered bonds, a popular way for Eurozone banks to repackage mortgages and public-sector loans.
The announcement went beyond financial markets’ expectations, driving the euro lower against the dollar and sending stock and bond markets sharply higher. The euro fell by a cent against the dollar immediately, and lost another half a cent as the afternoon went on. By 1115 EDT, it was trading just above a new 14-month low of $1.2961.
By the same token, stocks soared, with interest-rate sensitive banks leading the way. The Euro Stoxx 600 index rose 1.2% to a two-month high, with the banks sub-index rising 2.5%.
Draghi said that the main purpose of the rate cut was to encourage banks to take part in a series of offers of cheap long-term money starting this month. That should enable banks to pass on lower interest rates to a larger range of clients faster, he said, arguing that they might otherwise have held off in expectations of being able to borrow even more cheaply in the future.
By buying bonds outright, the ECB is aiming to free up space on banks’ balance sheets to lend more, and thus neutralize the effect of its own ongoing health check on Eurozone banks, which has made them even more risk-averse than they already were. ECB data last week showed banks cut their lending to businesses and households by 1.6% in the year to July, and by €12 billion in July alone.
The ECB’s action was welcomed by most analysts, with the usual exception of grumbling from some in Germany who think that the ECB has already cut rates too far.
International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde said the Fund “strongly welcomed” the move “which will help to counteract the dangers posed by an extended period of low inflation.”
However, not even Draghi thinks that the ECB’s actions will be enough to get the Eurozone growing. In another thinly-disguised swipe at France and Italy, Draghi urged governments to enact structural reforms, saying that failure on that front was the main drag on Eurozone growth.
“There is no fiscal or monetary stimulus that will produce any effect without ambitious, important structural reforms,” Draghi said.
The ECB’s is the last of the world’s major central banks still to be easing policy six years after the financial crisis. Both the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England are slowly moving to a tighter policy, now that the U.S. and U.K. economies are growing strongly again, while the Bank of Japan says it doesn’t expect to have to add any more stimulus. The Bank of England had left its official rates unchanged earlier Thursday.
